Introduction: Wiring an Xbox Kinect for USB

By Patrick's Projects
About: I study Aerospace Engineering at RMIT, in the hope that one day I will be able to bring about the return of intercontinental airship cruises. Until then I like to make stuff in the shed, and surf instructables

There are heaps of good instructables about hacking an Xbox Kinect. From 3D scanning to motion sensing, there's a tonne of cool stuff you can do with a Kinect, but so far there are no instructables on how to wire the Kinect for USB.

I don't know what is supposed to come in the bundle, but I bought a Kinect second hand, and got only the device. No adapters, cables or anything. So this is a quick instructable on how to cut of the original plug and wire a USB on, to use with a computer.

Step 1: You Will Need:

- An Xbox Kinect.

- A 12v 2A power supply. I used an old netbook power supply

- A USB cable

- Soldering iron + solder

- Heat shrink

Step 2: Wiring

Step 1:
Cut off the ends of the Kinect, the USB cable and the 12v power supply. Cut the Kinect and power supply close to the plug, but cut the USB with plenty of cable trailing out of the male plug.


Step 2:
Solder and heat shrink the four coloured USB wires to their corresponding Kinect wires. Red -> red, green -> green and white -> white. twist up the black wires, but don't solder or heat shrink them just yet.
Make sure there is no exposed wire that will cause a short.

I have attached I wiring diagram drawn by Ttunerboy on youtube.

Step 3:
Solder the brown Kinect wire to the 12v adapter positive, and the 12v adapter negative to the Kinect/USB black. Now you can heat shrink it (or try to, with its 3-way junction).

Step 4:
Heat shrink the whole bunch to make it neat. Maybe yours already is, but my job was disgustingly messy, and I needed to cover it up.

Step 5:
Follow the other instructable on this site, to make use of your new equipment!

OPTIONAL:
This will make the Kinect work on a computer, but it will be useless with an Xbox now. If you want to continue using it with an Xbox, you can splice the wires in without cutting of the Xbox plug. If you do so, you'll need to add in a switch couple of switches at the junctions between the USB's and Xbox's green and white wires. This is because when unused, the USB plug causes interference on the data (green and white) wires.