The pocket size Raspberry Pi computer, is shipped with some nice features including support for Linux OS, USB devices, OpenGL ES. Add to that, a huge community of devloppers porting all sort of code to this nice little machine. One of such projects being ported to Raspberry Pi platform is Kinect’s driver Libfreenect.
For today’s blog post, we are going to install Libfreenect in order to stream real time depth video inside the Raspberry Pi.
- Install Python-OpenCV and their dependencies:
First, update the package index:
sudo apt-get update
Then, install OpenCV for Python and dependencies by typing the following commands:
sudo apt-get install build-essential python-dev ipython python-opencv
sudo apt-get install python-numpy python-scipy
sudo apt-get install git-core git
- Install dependencies for Libfreenect:
sudo apt-get install freeglut3 freeglut3-dev libxmu-dev libxi-dev
sudo apt-get install cmake cmake-curses-gui pkg-config
- Install libusb 1.0.19:
Now for libusb, the pre-compiled binary version 1.0.0 wont work with the Kinect. For that, you have to compile it and install it from source directly into your Raspberry Pi.
Install prerequisites:
sudo apt-get install libudev-dev
Get the libusb source from github:
sudo wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/libusb/files/libusb-1.0/libusb-1.0.19/libusb-1.0.19.tar.bz2/download
Decompress the content:
tar xvjf download
Compile and install:
cd libusb-1.0.19
./configure
make
sudo make install
- Install Libfreenect:
Libfreenect is an opensource driver for Kinect on Linux machines. It interfaces to the Kinect and grab data from different sensors (IR images, RGB image, Depth Data). The source is available from github:
cd ..
git clone https://github.com/OpenKinect/libfreenect.git
cd libfreenect
mkdir build
cd build
ccmake ..
At this point, press ‘c’ key then with the arrow keys change BUILD EXAMPLES to OFF and make sure that LIBUSB_1_INCLUDE_DIR directory points to /usr/local/include/libusb-1.0
Once done press ‘c’ again then ‘g’.
then enter the following command:
cmake ..
make
sudo make install
Here you are done with installing libfreenect, so let test it.
- Testing libfreenect with Python:
change your current directory to libfreenect/wrappers/python:
cd ../wrappers/python
Then install the python module of libfreenect by typing:
sudo python setup.py install
If everything is going ok you should now be able to test some demo applications:
sudo python demo_cv_async.py
As you may notice, the kinect pushes the Raspberry Pi to its limits. The frame rate is clearly slower than that of modern desktop computers. However, this is easily understood by the fact that the Raspberry Pi is a small computer intended for small tasks with its 700MHz single core processor and the 512MB of RAM.
maleklamari 