Hacking the Kinect (Technology in Action)

First, the book uses OpenKinect to use the Kinect Device.The book has some nice chapters. In special the two chapters in Point Cloud Library (PCL) , Voxelization and Multiple Kinects.It also has good tips for the installation of some of this opensource libraries.The problem with the book, is that goes all over the place. If you want this book as a reference, then buy it. You could also use it as your first book for Kinect.Why do I say it goes all over the place?One example is in chapter 7, out of the blue, opengl appears. There are many examples like this. For example, in chapter 2, while talking about the hardware, it talks about using it with arduino.This is why I think this book serves better as an addition to you kinect library more than your first kinect book.If you are using the Kinect SDK, I do recommend Programming with the Kinect for Windows SDK.I'm waiting to receive Kinect for Windows SDK Programming Guide. It may be even better, but I don't know yet. I will review this book later in march 2013.

I think it's a good reference for those who doesn't want to use the official Programming for Kinect. I think it's a good alternative.

If you want to do some Kinect hacking of your own, and you don't know where to start, and you already have programming experience then this book is awesome! I had already done quite a bit of Kinect hacking myself before this book was released, but once it was out it gave me loads of great ideas on how to improve my hacking. It also is great for teaching you how to interface with and use the Point Cloud Library (PCL, point clouds.org). I definitely recommend this book if you want to use more powerful programming languages than Processing (processing.org).