During Summer 2014, I had the chance to work on a Kinect v2 “Speech Bubbles” app, built upon a sample project from Kinect MVP Tom Kerkhove. In the initial version, I added a speech bubble gets displayed above a person’s head when the person walks into view.

However, this created a problem for multiple people. It was displaying the same text for every person who walked into view, up to 6 people. So, I decided to update the program to display a new random message every time a new person is detected.

I quickly discovered that this created yet another problem: all the displayed messages would get updated for everyone, even when only 1 new person entered the frame. Finally, I added an array of displayed messages (one for each detected body), so that everyone gets their own randomized text.

Now, it was ready to test in the wild… so I used it at HackUMBC, a hackathon event at the University of Maryland Baltimore College.

•  More Pics from HackUMBC: https://wakeupandcode.com/hackumbc/

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UPDATE, after July 2014 updates:  This blog post was originally published using the alpha version of the Kinect v2 SDK. If you have the updated July 2014 SDK, make sure you start with the updated version of the reference project, written by Tom Kerkhove.

DOWNLOAD SOURCE CODE: https://wakeupandcode.com/public_downloads/SpeechBubblesForKinect.zip

ORIGINAL POST, before July 2014 updates:

When Microsoft released the alpha version of Kinect for Windows v2 via their preview program, I was one of the first to grab the dev kit. I blogged about it in late 2013, after getting it set up with my laptop. As of July 2014, Microsoft has just released the final version of the unit, now available for purchase.

Unlike the previous version of Kinect, the new version now includes the ability to create Windows Store apps. Check out the following MSDN blog post for more information:

• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kinectforwindows/archive/2014/04/02/windows-store-app-development-is-coming-to-kinect-for-windows.aspx

If you’re interested in purchasing one for yourself, read on to find out what it has in store for you!

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