Add Kinect SDK as prerequisite to my application

Question

My application needs Kinect SDK (http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27876) installed in the user machine. So I need to verify if Kinect SDK is already installed on the machine.

If not, I want that the installer to offers the official download link to the user...

Is it possible? If it is.. how can I do it?

Thanks in advance..

Answer 1

So far the official Kinect SDK is targeted for developers. Even though you could detect the absence of the SDK, the user must first install Visual C# 2010 Express edition before installing the Kinect SDK. This is one of the requirements to install the SDK. Personally I think it's too complicated already.

As mentioned on the SDK page (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/kinectforwindows/), in February this will all change. My guess is that Microsoft is releasing a Kinect Runtime so that users can install it and run Kinect applications (without needing Visual C#).

Answer 2

This is how I check for the Kinect Runtime, in my App.xaml.cs:

using Microsoft.Kinect;
using System;
using System.Linq;
using System.Windows;

namespace WpfApplication {
  public partial class App : Application {
    protected override void OnStartup(StartupEventArgs e) {
      if (IsKinectRuntimeInstalled) {
        base.OnStartup(e);
      }
      else {
        MessageBoxResult result = MessageBox.Show("Microsoft Kinect Runtime 1.8 is required.\nClick \"OK\" to download Microsoft Kinect Runtime 1.8 from Microsoft's website.",
            "Kinect Runtime required",
            MessageBoxButton.OKCancel);
        if (result == MessageBoxResult.OK) {
          System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40277");
        }
      }
    }

    public bool IsKinectRuntimeInstalled {
      get {
        bool isInstalled;
        try {
          TestForKinectTypeLoadException();
          isInstalled = true;
        }
        catch (TypeInitializationException) {
          isInstalled = false;
        }
        return isInstalled;
      }
    }

    private void TestForKinectTypeLoadException() {
      KinectSensor kinectCheck = KinectSensor.KinectSensors.FirstOrDefault();
    }
  }
}

Inspired by this post.

I'm using the Kinect SDK 1.8 and .NET 4.5.

As far as I know, up to version 1.8, there's no registry key to check.

It's also possible to bundle the Kinect Runtime Redistributable into your installer and execute it during install, e.g. via a Custom Action. I have two problems with relying on this method:

• The 1.8 redistributable is ~120 MB, "too beaucoup."
• The runtime may somehow get deleted or broken some time after the install. If I don't have this check at startup, my application will crash inexplicably (for the lay-user).

Answer 3

It is possible to have a ClickOnce installer detect whether the target machine has the Kinect runtime installed (note that typically only the runtime is necessary, not the full SDK). To do this you need to set the Kinect runtime as a prerequisite for your application.

See https://bitbucket.org/malingo/kinect-runtime-bootstrapper for details on how to do this.