Installing OpenKinect and OpenCV the easy way on a Mac

Edit: I now have a new slightly polished cocoa-freenect wrapper for use in your Kinect-Cocoa projects! Check out the post here. On the repo there also new and improved installation instructions!

For ages I tried to find an easy way to install both libfreenect (OpenKinect) and OpenCV on my mac without having to follow loads of lines of instructions and getting lots of errors in the process.

So, after quite a while of searching around for an easy install, which didn’t involve me installing loads of different package managers, I came across these methods which work really nicely 🙂

First, Install Homebrew, if you don’t have it already:

• It’s super easy… just follow the instruction… GO!
• That was crazy fast, now do one of these, or both, or none…

OpenKinect:

• If you still have your terminal open type in (or copy and paste) these commands one at a time and press enter.

cd /usr/local/Library/Formula

 

curl --insecure -O "https://raw.github.com/OpenKinect/libfreenect/master/platform/osx/homebrew/libfreenect.rb"

curl --insecure -O "https://raw.github.com/OpenKinect/libfreenect/master/platform/osx/homebrew/libusb-freenect.rb"

brew install libfreenect

• Then, once all thats finished you’re done for OpenKinect 🙂 you can give it a test by typing this into the terminal (as long as your still in the install directory..)

glview

OpenCV (2.3.1a):

• Now, OpenCV is even easier again! Just type in (or copy and paste again) this command:

brew install opencv

• This one takes a bit longer than OpenKinect…
• And then, You’re all done!
• You can close terminal now 🙂

Now the last task. If you want to use these libraries in Xcode just follow these steps:

• These instructions are for Xcode 4 by the way. Sorry Xcode 3 people, I started using Xcode from version 4.. But don’t worry Xcode 3 people, if you know what you’re doing then this is pretty much the same process as using the built in Mac libraries.
• If your creating a Cocoa application it’s a little simpler:
  • Open your YourApp.xcodeproj file
  • Select the target you want to add it to, there will usually only be one
  • Then click “Summary”
  • And under “Linked Frameworks and Libraries” press the plus button
  • In the search field that shows up type in “libfreenect”
  • You will see all the libraries that begin with libfreenect. So now you can choose one 🙂 I usually use libfreenect_sync because it is easier to use this in objective-c programs, from what I have seen so far. So select the latest version of it that shows up.
  • That’s it for that. Now to include it in your application code just type this #import <libfreenect/libfreenect_sync.h>
• Now, if it isn’t a Cocoa application but a Console application do these things:
  • Open your YourApp.xcodeproj file
  • Select the target you want to add it to
  • Click on the “Build Phases” tab
  • Then under “Link Binary With Libraries” press the plus button
  • In the search field that shows up type in “libfreenect”
  • Now you can select which library you would like to use as I discussed in the second to last point of the Cocoa app method.
  • All done!

So now you should be all sorted with OpenKinect and OpenCV (the libraries when searching are called libopencv… there are quite a few tho, don’t really wanna go into what does what and what you need and all that… I don’t really know that myself just yet..)

Anyways, bye bye everyone