Enable PR2 Kinect audio

pr2_kinect_audio.md

Enable PR2 Kinect audio

Add hark packages sources

Follow the installation instructions.

In PR2 (not pr2s machine):

sudo bash -c 'echo -e "deb http://winnie.kuis.kyoto-u.ac.jp/HARK/harkrepos precise non-free\ndeb-src http://winnie.kuis.kyoto-u.ac.jp/HARK/harkrepos precise non-free" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hark.list'

wget -q -O - http://winnie.kuis.kyoto-u.ac.jp/HARK/harkrepos/public.gpg | sudo apt-key add -

sudo apt-get update

Install kinect hark

Follow the instructions.

sudo apt-get install hark-kinect

Note that the installation may take a bit long as it will download from Microsoft KinectSDK-v1.0-beta2-x86.msi which is ~20Mb.

Reboot.

To check if it worked

The card should appear listed:

cat /proc/asound/cards

0 [AudioPCI       ]: ENS1371 - Ensoniq AudioPCI
                     Ensoniq AudioPCI ENS1371 at 0x2080, irq 16
1 [Audio          ]: USB-Audio - Kinect USB Audio
                     Microsoft Kinect USB Audio at usb-0000:02:03.0-1, high speed
...

You should be able to record an audio with:

arecord -D hw:0,0 -f S32_LE -r 16000 -c 4 test.wav

The audio format is specified here:

Name	Type	Value	Explanation
LENGTH	int	512	Number of samples in one frame
ADVANCE	int	160	Shift length
CHANNEL_COUNT	int	4	Number of microphone channels
SAMPLING_RATE	int	16000	Sampling rate of the audio stream
DEVICE_TYPE	string	DS	Category of the sensors
DEVICE	string	kinect	Device name

To remove and cleanup

sudo apt-get --purge remove hark-kinect

sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hark.list

sudo apt-get update

To let more than one software access to the microphone

Create the file ~/.asoundrc with the contents:

pcm.mixin {
    type dsnoop
    ipc_key 5978293 # must be unique for all dmix plugins!!!!
    ipc_key_add_uid yes
    slave {
        pcm "hw:0,0"
        channels 4
        period_size 1024
        buffer_size 4096
        rate 16000
              }
}

Now you can record with:

arecord -D plug:mixin -f S32_LE -r 16000 -c 4 test.wav

And any software that wants to record at the same time needs to use the card plug:mixin.