When Arduino Meets Kinect: An Intelligent Ambient Home Entertainment Environment

This paper describes an gesture-based system suitable for use in a party. With the Microsoft Kinect for Windows sensor, LEDs or lamps, Arduino, and a set of Relay Shield for Arduino, our module creates an immersive ambient entertainment environment that is responsive and sensitive to the presence of users reflected by their gestures, feet movements, and can roughly recognize users´ mood based on their facial expressions. We use C# to develop Kinect for Windows application to detect a single user (full skeletal) movement and facial expression. In response to the user´s feet/leg movement, the external LED spotlight will be turned on via Arduino Uno and its Relay Shield. The facial expression will be transferred into mood detection module. A higher mood will be used to control ambient light and play music at the same time. That said, a USB port will be used to connect the Kinect sensor, and one or two more USB ports will be used to connect to the Arduino kits. A servo-motor will be used to rotate spotlights.