[ale] Official open source driver for Kinect

[Michael Potter]

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 10:24 AM, arxaaron <arxaaron at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2010/12/15, at 11:37 , Jim Kinney wrote:
>
>> Can this gizmo be used without an Xbox? (i'mnotbuyingoneforanyreason)
>>
>
> Short answer:  Yes.
> The Kinect is a separate interface device, just like WII remotes,
> which have also been extensively hacked and re-purposed.
>
> As to (i'mnotbuyingoneforanyreason), it is my understanding that
> the Kinect, like the Xbox itself, is a loss leader device and that
> Mafia$oft looses money on every purchase.  I think they are
> conceding to the open source drivers because the djin is out
> of the bottle now and they can't do anything about that except
> try to steer the hacker development focus back to their platform.
>
> peace
> aaron
>

I was speculating the same thing, so I did a bit of googling:
According to EETimes the kinect is about $56.00 parts:
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4210649/Kinect-s-BOM-roughly--56--teardown-finds-

That does not include licensing that they pay, so it still could be a
loss leader.

-- 
Michael Potter