Is this a good part
To set you on your start
Make you go to the 'Mart
And fill your cart
And with your money part?
Why not be smart
And take this review to heart?
We looked at the Kinect and a lense that gives it much closer vision, so today we look at another depth cam, Asus' Xtion PRO LIVE. The Xtion PRO LIVE pretty much is a Kinect. It has an infrared laser projector the generates a pattern, a camera that uses the pattern to create a 3d image, a color camera to give...color, and two microphones for stereo sensing. It lacks a imu and tilt device as well as only having 2 microphones instead of 4. At 1.5" x 7" x 1.9" it's a good 4 inches shorter then Kinect so it may be easier to use it in various assemblies. It does not require a special usb2 cable, or two usb2 cables to power it like the Kinect, making it simpler to use. It's range is Between 0.8 meters and 3.5 meters and has a fov of 58º horizontal, 45º vertical, 70º diagonal, like a non optic corrected Kinect. Unfortunatly, there is nothing that can be done about this. It can stream at 60fps, twice the speed of KinectIt works with various flavors of Windows an Linux like the Kinect(linux being from hackers). It costs $189.99. More then Kinect for Xbox 360, less then Kinect for Windows. It can not saddly use the skeleton tracking feture. In summery, its smaller size and use of only one standard usb2 cable opens it to more possibilities when using it in your project. It's faster frame rate may make mapping and obstical avoidence better, So if these are the features that are most desired, it's slightly higher cost won't be much of a factor. If the skeleton tracking feature so it can use body languge of humans is attractive as well as the ability to give it a wider shorter range and you have two usv2 ports or ok with modding one. The Kinect would be best. Note the Kinect for Windows though $250.00 allows you to have 4 at one time. The ability to use more then one may also be a deciding factor, however it dosn't support the optic change. So if you want small size, nearer range, or multiple depth cams, the choice of which three is clear. Additional I hear that the people at Willow Garage, an open source robot oeperating system development group, have used cameras with higher resolution with the Kinect to allow it to have improved range sensing. Also the company Prime Sense that makes the technology for these cameras have their own available for developers that looks even smaller still, maybe 4 inches long. Perhaps by sacrificing the microphones. So if you want to play with something that uses even less space, try convincing them to give you one.