Microsoft Kinect – or Cant Kinect out of box

 

Kinect

Over the black friday holiday, I figured it would be a great time to pick up a Microsoft Kinect. They were having sales for $199 for the kinect bundles at multiple places. After waking up extra early and missing the line to pick one up in store, I also missed an opportunity to buy one from amazon.com. Feeling dejected, I checked out eBay, and was able to buy one from ToysRUs Ebay store for $199. no shipping, just tax. I felt silly waking up early. I promised myself no more waiting in line during black friday for deals that you could likely find online.

Eitherway,  I wanted to get a Kinect, beause I figured my sig other might actually like playing it. When I bought our Wii, I thought the same. Wrong. I think I got her to play with it 2x. I bought a PS3 Move last Turkey day thinking the same thing. Wrong. She refused to play it. (Has yet to touch it). With the kinect/dancing game, I was certain she would want to play, and so far so good.

Well the point of thise post is to review my setup, and to review the system overall.

With either the Wii, PS3, or Xbox, the motion gaming requires a sensor that sits near the screen. At least for the Wii they have wireless options. The PS3 eye Toy and Xbox Kinect require more information to be transferred and must be connected with a cord. If your system is next to the screen/tv this is not an issue, but for those who use a projector and have the system much farther away this is an issue.

When I bought the Kinect bundle, I was not aware of the “kinect ready” xbox vs the older ones. The Kinect sensor uses a proprietary powered usb port. The older Xboxes do not have the proprietary port, only USB ports. Problem with the regular USB ports is that they do not provide enough power to run the Kinect sensor. When you buy the kinect by itself it comes with a pigtail adapter that has a seperate power adapter and adapter for a typical usb a port. This allows the sensor to be plugged into USB port, while being powered with the power supply.

Kinect Pigtail Adapter

With this option I was able to use a usb extension cable from MonoPrice.com to extend the length and use my kinect with my projector.

USB Extension for Xbox Kinect or PS3 Eye

I also used the same USB extension cord for my PS3 Eye toy, and it works great now with no more degradation of signals and cutting out.  Even though it is the same cord they have a separate item on the monoprice site