Our free Kinect module works with Community Core Vision (CCV) software, an open source software package for computer vision. We’ve used this software in the past with various multitouch tables and other installations. Our Kinect module is a “directshow” source filter, a virtualized webcam device that reads data from the drivers released by OpenKinect.

Here’s a video showing the Kinect module working with other Open Exhibits software.

The Kinect module and the others are all free and open on the Open Exhibits website. The Open Exhibits core software is free for students, educators, nonprofits, and museums. (Commercial users can download a free GestureWorks trial.)  Add a $150 Kinect 3D Motion Controller to our software and you have a very cheap and flexible authoring solution.

There are photographs of the Kinect and Open Exhibits modules on the OE Flickr site.

This article is cross-posted on the Open Exhibits Website.In the video, the gigapixel image of El Capitán that appeared in the example was provided by xRez Studio. The cubic VR image of Chichen Itza was taken by Ideum back in 2005 and is part of the Traditions of the Sun project.

We built the tables and worked with Vancouver Aquarium back in the summer of 2009 to create the software. The report looks at the “general experience of the digital tables”, including the form factor, and then it takes a closer look at the applications.

The study shows, as Jeff points out in his post, that “not everything was a success with the tables, but they are, overall, successful.”  Considering the emergent nature of these types of exhibits, we were pleased to see that the study was generally very positive.

Still, some things didn’t work as well we would have liked. There were significant usability issues with the early version of the Collection Viewer.  I’m happy to report that many of the issues cited in the report have been fixed in the newer version of the Collection Viewer that is available on the Open Exhibits site.  We built in the ability to easily change some of the design parameters via XML. For example, button size and spacing can be modified by changing the XML. In addition, we remapped many of the gestures, so that the Collection Viewer objects respond better to visitor interaction. Still, some issues remain and we’ll be taking a closer look at this report and making additional changes.

Studies like this are incredibly valuable (and far too rare in the field).  As designers and developers, we can only learn so much through testing and observation in the studio.  The museum (or aquarium) setting and the sheer number and range of different visitors provides us with a new picture of the exhibit.  You can download and read the full report on the Open Exhibits website, Interactive Tables at the Vancouver Aquarium.

We’ve recently released two new modules on Open Exhibits. The gigapixel viewer module allows Open Exhibits and GestureWorks users to plug any gigapixel image into our Flash application and drag and zoom it using multitouch inputs. We recently demo’d this app for the first time at CES 2011 and it was a big hit.

MT-Kinect, our other new module, allows users to interface with a Kinect to manipulate multitouch applications using gesturing (like in the movie Minority Report) rather than directly touching a screen. We combined this module with a gigapixel viewer to create an application that allows you to move and zoom by waving your arms.

So how does our application convert Kinect data to multitouch-compatible input that our Flash application can read? We wrote a “directshow” source filter, a virtualized webcam device that reads data from the drivers released by OpenKinect.

After adjusting the depth data to amplify the edges – which optimizes this application for gestures from a single user centered in the Kinect’s camera – we output a simple webcam feed. We route this information to a vanilla installation of CCV (theoretically, other  trackers should work), which runs various filters, finds the blobs, and outputs the data in whatever format we would like to consume (in our case,”flosc,” which enables Flash apps to get “OSC” information ). Our gigapixel viewer software can then read this input as though it came from any multitouch device.

These modules are free to download and use; you just need to be an Open Exhibits member. The gigapixel viewer requires that you have either Open Exhibits Core or GestureWorks software. Open Exhibits Core is available free to educational users. Commercial users can try GestureWorks free or purchase a license.

And if you’re wondering about the stunning gigapixel image of El Capitán, it was taken by xRez Studio who were nice enough to let us use the image for this demo.

Ideum, in partnership with Goddard Space Flight Center, was awarded a grant to extend the tremendously popular web-based Space Weather Media Viewer to the mobile platform.  The application ships with informational videos, visualizations, NASA mission information, and enables near real-time observation and social network propagation of space weather phenomenon.

This was our first foray onto the rocky road of iPhone development, but with the help of libraries like Three20, we were able to complete a very full-featured and superbly performing application relatively quickly. We will say that the iPhone development process is not as simple as what we were promised when the iPhone first launched. Our next goal is the Android version of the application, and we’re examining other rapid development platforms, some of which, due to licensing issues, were not available for our use with the iPhone.

So, check out the app store page to download the Space Weather Media Viewer, mobile version. It’s free. You can also use the QR code to the right to access the page from your phone! Just click it to view the full size.

Edward Rothstein at the Times didn’t seem to be too impressed by any of the apps he tried, and from a contextual or information standpoint, he may have a point. If you are looking for an extended, interactive version of the wall plaques that detail the artist’s life, history, and context, these apps may fall short. But in our work designing interactive exhibits, we’ve found that it is the social component that can make or break an exhibit, and the Brooklyn Museum is pushing how mobile technologies connect people through the art they’re viewing as well as inform them about that art.

If used well, these new technologies can change the museum from a place where people connect with exhibits in solitude (audio tour headphones on, reading quietly to themselves, or quietly tapping a single computer screen) to a place where people are able to actively connect, recommend and participate with other visitors and the exhibit. Enabling a “like” or similar feature, as the Brooklyn Museum has done, allows visitors to connect long after they leave the museum floor. And such connections aren’t just wishful thinking; as Ms. Bernstein points out, the app statistics show that people are actually using the Like feature to find and recommend objects to other visitors.

Such connections may add to the “scarcely literate cybergraffiti” for Mr. Rothstein, but to us, they’re what make facebook, twitter, and a new crop of interactive museum technologies exciting: the ability to share with and learn from people you know personally and the opportunity to forge new personal connections over shared exhibit interests.

Of course there’s always room to grow, especially when working with new and largely untried technologies. Even if the concept is perfect, technological, networking, and financial limitations often frustrate the creation of that ur-application or exhibit. The perfect museum app might well act as Wikipedia, Share This!, FourSquare and a brilliant curator all in one. But we’d like to give a thumbs up to the Brooklyn Museum for having the guts to experiment with these technologies in a thoughtful and interesting way.