Kinect - motion tracking is officially commercial (update)

**EDIT**

Open source hardware company Adafruit Industries is offering a $2,000 bounty for the first person or group to upload code and examples under an open source license to GitHub for the Xbox Kinect released today. The Kinect sensor outputs video at a frame rate of 30 Hz, with the RGB video stream at 32-bit color VGA resolution (640×480 pixels), and the monochrome video stream used for depth sensing at 16-bit QVGA resolution (320×240 pixels with 65,536 levels of sensitivity). The Kinect sensor has a practical ranging limit of 1.2-3.5 metres (3.9-11 ft) distance. The open hardware group would like to see this camera used for education, robotics and fun outside the Xbox.

But Microsoft isn't taking kindly to the bounty offer. "Microsoft does not condone the modification of its products," a company spokesperson told CNET. "With Kinect, Microsoft built in numerous hardware and software safeguards designed to reduce the chances of product tampering. Microsoft will continue to make advances in these types of safeguards and work closely with law enforcement and product safety groups to keep Kinect tamper-resistant."

So in response Adafruit doubled it to $2k

"We think First Robotics could use this," Torrone said. "We think educators could use this. Look at all the cool stuff people did with the Wii remote."

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/