hi I just recently purchased ipi studio basic and was having a litle trouble getting the two Kinect Serup to work properly on a Dell XPS 1530 system. Asi understand from reading and research, as long as the two Kinects are not on the same controller they should work. do i miss understand this?

On the Dell XP 1530 Running windows 7 ultimate 32 Bit, there are three USB ports, two on the left (USB 2.0), one on the right(USB 1.0) . anything currently i plug into them, works as expected (Hard Drives, Peripherals etc etc).

I can hook up ONE kinect and everything works as expected. i have tried serveal combinations of Kinect into USB from Both on 1 side, split between two sides to no avail.

Now i did happen to have my HP Pavillion Laptop from work here, it has 6 USB so i tried that, after several attempted combinations of left right, finally got it to work with both Kinects Stacked on the Right side of the Pavillion, unfortunately, when recording i got Buffer errors, so i guess that being an XP system it cant handle it. too bad, i thought i ahd it solved too :(

So i guess m question is, what to do? what to do? i am a N00B and havent got a clue. i believe i have the right amount of controllers on the Dell XPS1530, but cant seem to figure out why it is not working. if i need another controller, please suggest a brand name for an external hub, but i dont think thats the solution.



these are the controllers in the Dell XPS 1530 as they appear in the device manager windows 7 ultimate 32 Bit
Intel ICH8 Family USB Universal Host Controller


Intel ICH8 Family USB2 Universal Host Controller

7 USB Root Hubs

Any help is Much appreciate

TIA
Thor

You may already know this but it's important to not confuse USB Ports with USB Controllers. A computer can have several USB Ports and still have only one Controller. For example, my Dell e1705 has six USB Ports but has only one USB Controller.

That said, I believe many modern laptops have at least two Controllers. One thing to be aware of is that a Contoller may be used by a built-in camera, in which case, it's possible that you're back to just one Controller. I'm not sure if you can disable the built-in camera to get the Controller back. This can vary from laptop to laptop, so I can't say this affects you with any certainty.

I think the wiki has instructions for figuring out how many actual Controllers you have available.

If you have an ExpressCard slot, you can add an additional controller card. This can be USB 2.0 or 3.0. USB 3.0 is recommended--it won't speed up Kinect or PS3 Eye but it won't hurt either, plus it may be more useful as computers move away from USB 2.0 to 3.0 in the coming years.

Regarding the issue with the Pavilion, it sounds like you may have two Controllers available, but the issue may have to do with bandwidth. Do you have an SSD or a second internal drive you are capturing to? If not, I'm assuming you are capturing to an external drive, which I'm going to guess is a USB drive. In this case, USB 2.0 may not be fast enough to capture from two Kinects. It's better to go with eSATA 6GB or USB 3.0 if possible. I don't know if your computer already has controller for these devices; if not, you may need to add an ExpressCard for this feature if your laptop can accept one.

FWIW, here's my experience with Kinect and laptops:

For single Kinect, I was using an old Dell e1705, a first generation dual core laptop running XP Professional. To make this work, I needed to add a USB 3.0 ExpressCard and USB 3.0 external Drive for capture. This worked great with single Kinect but I could not get it to work with dual, even after disabling RGB. The problem was, as mentioned above, I had only one controller in this laptop (despite having six USB ports.)

I also tried an HP tm2 Tablet PC. This is a more recent laptop. I found that it works great with a single Kinect and if I record directly to the system drive, which isn't really recommended unless you have an SSD. I could not sustain writing to an external USB 2.0 drive and this Tablet does not have a slot of ExpressCards. I tried dual Kinect and failed with this Tablet PC, which didn't surprise me--this is a fantastic device for drawing and painting, but I'm pretty sure I was pushing the hardware limits by trying to simultaneously capture from multiple video devices with it.

Right now I'm using a quad core desktop and recording to an SSD, and having absolutely no problems ever with dual Kinect. Not to be discouraging but if you want to do dual Kinect captures, I recommend going with a desktop computer if you can. IMO, a single Kinect Sensor should work great with most modern laptops but dual Kinects may be a too much. I'm sure it's possible but the laptop may require some beefy hardware spec to do it. Also, tracking with laptop graphics cards can be a lot slower than with a modern desktop graphics card like any of Nvidia's recent GTX cards.

Hope this clarifies a few things and that you will get things sorted out and working soon. Good luck!

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

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One more thing: if you use any USB extension cables, these MUST be USB Repeater cables, also known as Active USB cables. Standard USB cables may be inadequate for a reliable signal. You can buy a good Repeater cable for about $12 to $15 each at many online electronics stores. (I use Newegg.)

Also, a hub will not help for mutliple Kinect Sensors because they will be piped into a single port and controlled to a single Controller. If it turns out you only have one Controller, you're option will be to add a second Controller, probably via ExpressCard. (Other options may exist depending on what's available for your specific laptop.)

Um. I guess that was two more things. Oh well. :p

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Well thats all Good news and bad news, i do appreciate your response. the XPS1530 does have an integrated web cam but that is disabled. i think the issue with the XPS is that it may route all USB ports via 1 controller, the web cam has its own controller internally. however, that said, there is two different types of USB ports, USB1 and USB 2. there are Firewire and HDMI ports available, but not sure if there are a such thing as a firewire USB port or an HDMI USB Port. doubtful but i will look.

the HP Pavilion does have an express card Port, SD slot, Firewire and HDMI ports, i think the HP and the Dell are only a Year apart in release dates, HP Being the Newer of the two. i have an option to get a new Alienware 14x, which is a high speed system by all accounts. i am not buying it SPECIFICALLY for this software but it certainly gives more reason to get it.

I will try the HP Again tonight with a class 10 SDHC card in the Slot and try writing to that and see how i make out. Unfortunately i have a soft heart and my brothers kids needed a good computer so i gave away an XPS 630. it was replaced by an Area 51, so at that time i had no use for it. kicking my self now tho!! :P the Area 51 is too heavy to move back and forth from editing room to studio.

i'll post back and see where i get tonight. thanks again for the quick response

i have hp pavillion dv6 i3. it has 4 usb ports and 2 usb controllers. it uses one controller for 2 usb ports and webcam, the second one for other usb ports. if you have the same one you should choose correct combination of 2 usb ports.

i have elitebook 8530p. it has 3 usb ports and 2 usb controllers. but it uses one controller for 3 usb ports, and the second one for just webcam.

for 2 kinects reqirement is; you must have 2 usb controllers and you should able to use your usb port separately on these controllers.

The HP is FINE for USB/Dual Connects,this isnt the issue with the HP. its the Write Speed that is too much for it. i am looking into a USB 3.0 to plug into the available Slot to get better write speeds

write speed is related with harddisk. did you turned rgb record off? do you have 7200 rpm disk? what is your ram amount?

the Speed of the disk is a problem thats for sure, i dont believe i have a 7200 rpm drive, again this is a WORK laptop not my personal one and not the one slated for use with ipi Soft. i need to be able to use the Dell XPS 1530 or i may purchase an Alienware m14x, how ever i would like to get the Dell to work successfully some where along the way with both Kinects

well i have tried Firewire connection to a Seagate 7200 external drive, a class 10 SD Card that i use in my video cameras, and a USB connection to a Seagate drive, always the Buffer Over run was the result. i am currently using my HP Pavilion 8710W, are there any other suggestions to get ipiSoft to work on this laptop? i am getting an Alienware m14x, infact its on its way, it has two USB 3.0 slots and One USB 2.0 slot. if this is the same result when it gets here, i am gonna be severely depressed i cant get two Kinects to hook up and work right with a high end laptop.

Any Suggestions are greatly appreciated but it appears there are limitations to using two connects where the mother board Bus may be an issue. ipi recorded says its compression/data rate is 52.7 which seems quite capable of handling the speed? what am i missing?

is it JUST possible this is a Buffer Handling issue in the Software where it is NOT being Marshalled? isnt there any other way to get a 320x240 size ion the Kinect? sorry i am grasping at straws here, this software wasnt cheap. i'd like to see it work as advertised. sorry frustrated right now

http://crystalmark.info/software/Crysta ... dex-e.html

use this program to test if your disk can record 53 MB/s at random write. my disk can write 87 MB/s seq and 38 MB/s random.

use usb 3.0 empty disk. with empty disk your sequential write chance will be higher.

increment your ram to 8 gb.

for external disk set removal policy to better performance. bu don't disconnect it without "Safely Remove Hardware"