Compile OpenNI for Kinect Motor Control on Linux

Posted by on March 29, 2012

First, make sure you have everything you need to compile OpenNI (if you don’t already have a Java JDK, you will need to install one):

sudo apt-get install git-core cmake freeglut3-dev pkg-config \
 build-essential libxmu-dev libxi-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev \
 doxygen graphviz mono-complete

Next, make a directory to store the build in, then clone the OpenNI source from GitHub:

mkdir ~/kinect
cd ~/kinect
git clone https://github.com/OpenNI/OpenNI.git

Due to a bug in the OpenNI driver, you cannot use custom USB control types on Linux and Mac without first changing some lines in the XnUSBLinux.cpp file. Here’s how:

gedit ~/kinect/OpenNI/Source/OpenNI/Linux/XnUSBLinux.cpp

Search for the two lines that contain “XN_STATUS_USB_WRONG_CONTROL_TYPE”, comment them out and then insert “bmRequestType = nType;” just before them, as is in the following snippet:

	else if (nType == XN_USB_CONTROL_TYPE_STANDARD)
	{
		bmRequestType = LIBUSB_REQUEST_TYPE_STANDARD;
	}
	else
	{
		bmRequestType = nType;
		//return (XN_STATUS_USB_WRONG_CONTROL_TYPE);
	}
	
	bmRequestType |= LIBUSB_ENDPOINT_IN;

The line numbers for this should be 761 and 819.

Now compile OpenNI by using the RedistMaker script in the Platform/Linux folder and install the binaries that are created by using the install script:

cd ~/kinect/OpenNI/Platform/Linux/CreateRedist/
chmod +x RedistMaker
./RedistMaker
cd ../Redist/OpenNI-Bin-Dev-Linux-x86-v1.5.2.23/
sudo ./install.sh

That’s it! You should now have a working OpenNI installation that is compatible with my kinectmotorcontrol program. If you want to install SensorKinect and NITE, this page should help you continue with that:

http://mitchtech.net/ubuntukinect-openni-primesense/

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