Compiling NiSimpleViewer -- from Kinect OpenNI sample code

(This was an old article kept in draft state for about four months)

In previous post I installed the OpenNI SDK and tested some of its samples [1]. I am trying to study something from the sample code and what I've chosen now is the NiSimpleViewer example (which can be found in openni/Samples/NiSimpleViewer).

To avoid messing up the original sample code, I copied the whole directory of NiSimpleViewer and renamed it to mySimpleViewer.

The first work was to compile the source code. Of course the samples included makefiles but they were used for more general and more complicated cases. What I needed was just a simple and self-contained makefile. My first attempt was to simplify the makefile, but unfortunately it's too complicate for me to understand or even to modify it. So I wrote a simple one as the follows (I knew it's unnecessary to do so for such a simple case, but I just wanted to do a bit of exercise on writing makefiles.) :

CC = g++ 
CFLAGS = -g -Wall
LDFLAGS = -lglut -lOpenNI -I /usr/include/ni 
EXECUTABLE = mySimpleViewer
SOURCES = $(EXECUTABLE).cpp
OBJECTS = $(EXECUTABLE).o

all:
        $(CC) $(CFLAGS) -o $(EXECUTABLE) $(SOURCES) $(LDFLAGS)

After running mySimpleViewer, the program complained that the file SamplesConfig.xml cannot be found. I checked the source code as well as the files in related directories and found the path should be changed from

../../Config/SamplesConfig.xml

to

../Config/SamplesConfig.xml

In fact the relative path for the source code to find the xml file is ``../Config'' but not ``../../Config''. This was because the original Makefile putted the binaries in openni/Samples/Bin/Release/ which was one more directory deeper than my test example (thanks to my colleague's reminder).

Also, I modified some #define macros to const type. Based on my knowledge, this would be more ``c++ style''.

const XnChar* SAMPLE_XML_PATH = "../Config/SamplesConfig.xml";

const int GL_WIN_SIZE_X = 1280;
const int GL_WIN_SIZE_Y = 1024;

const unsigned int DISPLAY_MODE_OVERLAY = 1;
const unsigned int DISPLAY_MODE_DEPTH = 2;
const unsigned int DISPLAY_MODE_IMAGE = 3;
const unsigned int DEFAULT_DISPLAY_MODE = DISPLAY_MODE_DEPTH;

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[1] Test Kinect in Ubuntu 12.04

Test Kinect in Ubuntu 12.04

In the previous post I tried to make the Kinect (for Windows) work in my Win7 with x86 driver. Actually my first attempt was to try to make the Kinect work in my Ubuntu 12.04 but failed, so I switched back to Win7 to make sure the Kinect is workable.

Several days ago I wanted to test the Kinect in my Ubuntu 12.04, and of course I googled and got OpenKinect. I followed the installation procedure but got no luck and before proceeding on I decided to make sure the Kinect is okay (and therefore `the previous post' about the test in Win7).

This time I followed another tutorial by igorbarbosa and finally got the Kinect working in my Ubuntu 12.04.

My installation steps were slightly different from that described in igorbarbosa's tutorial. I believe it is due to the version changes of avin2's SensorKinect driver.

Now I am sharing my installation and hope it might be useful to you.

Test Kinect in Win7 x64 using x86 driver

In the previous posts [1][2] I tried to rebuild a VS project using Kinect given by my colleague and encountered some problems. Because my Win7 is the x64 version but the project had been built for x86 (Win32) platform, the rebuilding work in my Win7 machine cost me and my colleague almost a whole working day (without my colleague's help, I may give up the rebuilding).

Although I changed the project configuration to x64 [2], there were still problems with other libraries, for instance, OpenCV, built along with the project for x86 platform. When I was wondering the next step, my colleague suggested me to try the x86 driver of Kinect and if it works, just keep sticking on the Win32 setting of the project configuration.

Hmm, it seemed I had taken a long route and headed back to the origin... XD

Okay, the happy news is the x86 driver really worked in the x64 Win7, and here is a working log of the test.