OpenKinect in openSUSE

After the release of the official Kinect SDK, by Microsoft, I decided to test the OpenKinect drivers for linux (as I already installed the official SDK in a Windows box).

The process is as exposed in the wiki installation guide , but it refers to Fedora/Ubuntu.

The whole procedure in opensuse is as follows:

  • Install build dependencies (I had most of them already installed):
    sudo zypper in cmake libusb-1_0-0 libusb-1_0-devel pkg-config freeglut freeglut-devel
  • Clone GIT repository (in a new directory if desired):
    git clone https://github.com/OpenKinect/libfreenect.git
  • Prepare the “build environment” :
    cd libfreenect/
    mkdir build
    cd build
    cmake ..
  • Install and link the libraries:
    make -j3
    sudo make install && sudo /sbin/ldconfig /usr/local/lib64/
  • Config the Kinect so it can be used as a normal user:
    • Create file : /etc/udev/rules.d/66-kinect.rules containing:

      #Rules for Kinect ####################################################
      SYSFS{idVendor}==”045e”, SYSFS{idProduct}==”02ae”, MODE=”0660″,GROUP=”video”
      SYSFS{idVendor}==”045e”, SYSFS{idProduct}==”02ad”, MODE=”0660″,GROUP=”video”
      SYSFS{idVendor}==”045e”, SYSFS{idProduct}==”02b0″, MODE=”0660″,GROUP=”video”
      ### END #############################################################

    • Add your user to the group Video (mine was already in that group, just check it in YaST, for instance)
  • Test the Kinect:
    glview

It should now work and show you the depth view, as well as the normal one. If it doesn’t work, just unplug and plug again the device (mine didn’t work before doing so).

Congratulations, you have your Kinect working in your openSUSE box!

Here’s a screenshot of what you will see (it’s set to IR mode):
Image and video hosting by TinyPic

Thanks a lot to Marcan for the development of this project (the initial dev. and now with the open kinect team), and the whole community for keeping the good work 😉

Have fun!

4 thoughts on “OpenKinect in openSUSE

  1. Hi David, i’m currently working on a project with a kinect (using opensuse 13.1), and i used your installation method (and checked the steps described in the openkinect page). It seems i’m getting and error related to the “libusb” library:

    [ 56%] Building C object examples/CMakeFiles/freenect-hiview.dir/hiview.c.o
    Linking C executable ../bin/freenect-glview
    ../lib/libfreenect.so.0.5.0: undefined reference to `libusb_get_parent’
    collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
    make[2]: *** [bin/freenect-glview] Error 1
    make[1]: *** [examples/CMakeFiles/freenect-glview.dir/all] Error 2

    After this, it stops.

    I made sure to check if the path used for the libusb-1.0/libusb.h and libusb-1.0.so were correct, even the configure step finds this libraries (cmake ..)

    — Found libusb-1.0:
    — – Includes: /usr/include/libusb-1.0
    — – Libraries: /usr/lib64/libusb-1.0.so

    I know this is and old post, but maybe you have an idea of why is this happening. I know from other posts that this kind of errors appears when the libusb-1.0.so file is not found, but as you can see, this is not the case. Thanks in advance.

      • Yes, im sorry for this late response, some other issues arose in my project and i forgot to publish the solution. The problem actually lies in the libusb version installed on the system. It would appear that opensuse 13.1 has a very old version of libusb installed (1.0.9, i don’t know why). The version the last libfreenect needs is the libusb 1.0.18. So i installed it and the compilation completed without problems. After that i had no other problems with the kinect.

        The rules i used are this:
        #Rules for Kinect ###################################################
        SUBSYSTEM==”usb”, ATTR{idVendor}==”045e”, ATTR{idProduct}==”02b0″, MODE:=”0666″
        SUBSYSTEM==”usb”, ATTR{idVendor}==”045e”, ATTR{idProduct}==”02ad”, MODE:=”0666″
        SUBSYSTEM==”usb”, ATTR{idVendor}==”045e”, ATTR{idProduct}==”02ae”, MODE:=”0666″

        ####################### END

        Somehow the rules with the group “video” didn’t work for me.

        Thanks to David for his help. Unfortunately i couldn’t test the installation from the repo. Hopefully this helps the ones that for any crazy reason like to install things from scratch hahaha.

    • Hi!

      Sorry for being so late, but I’ve been unavailable till today.

      I’ve managed to build the binaries by installing other libusb and libusb-dev version (from another repository).

      The repo I’ve used is: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/hardware/openSUSE_13.1

      I just added the repo and executed a “zypper dup” (you can specify the repo there).

      I hope this solve your problem. Tell me if not, and we’ll see other options.

      Regards, David.

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