So, the aim was to get PCDs from Kinect as soon as possible so I can start working with the point cloud data. On the way, I stumbled into getting the hang of how Kinect works, some basic programs that came along with the Kinect like obtaining a color+depth image, skeletal viewer etc.

Apologies if it looks distorted, had to both be in the image and take a screenshot (And taking a screenshot on Windows with a Mac keyboard requires clicking keys on all corners).

There were few more installations before even getting the Kinect running. Point Cloud Library with its 3rd party dependencies and OpenNI framework are installed and running. Compiled a simple program that reads data from Kinect and displays it on the screen. Stumbling into runtime errors and code halts. Memory usage is already up to 3GB which is three-fourths of the total. Let’s hope it doesn’t crash any soon.

Essentially, would like to get something like this in the next few weeks.

Image Courtesy: pointclouds.org

The target for this week is to get the program working on the IDE and start reading some data from the Kinect and store them as PCDs.