Reanimating the dead hack of the millenium

Functional on Ubuntu 18.04 as of today after a dozen hours of heedless lurching.

Microsoft's Kinect accessory for the Xbox is one of the the most intriguing developments in this Millenium.  Unfortunately it is Microsoft's Kinect, to do as they please with.  And they drowned it in a sack.

I have been reanimating both the V1 and V2 Kinects for the past couple of weeks.  After roaming through the myriad dead blogs and out-of-date tutorials, I have had to do some serious soul searching.  What could possibly be the excuse for subjecting myself to this much pain?

Virtually nothing is left intact in the various tutorial/maker sites I have found.  If the drivers aren't a misfit for the current version of the OS, the development configuration is almost impossible to patch back together across the various versions and libraries required for Processing or Visual Studio -- two of the most popular funeral homes for the dearly departed tech.

I predict there will be a new surge of interest in the classic Kinects, and within a year or two there will be a rehabilitation of some of the dormant Git and Source Forge repositories that will allow newbies like me to get, install, and code fairly seamlessly.

In the meantime, while I figure out why I am doing this self-mutilation, I thought I might as well leave some crumbs and "don't bother" signs on my trail, in case anyone ends up following the same general direction.

If you are doing something similar, let me know.  If you are starting out or have been maintaining a dev config through the generations of Linux or Windows let me know.  I don't have any Mac access, so I won't presume to advise or sympathize with that variant of Unix, but I welcome shouts across the platform divides.  Especially if they are encouragement.  But even if they are mere cries of mortal agony.

For the record, I am working with:
A Lenovo S20 workstation with 32 g RAM, 2 T HD, 8 core Xeon processor running Ubuntu 18. Vintage hardware, no USB 3, but pimped out enough to run the V1 dev kit and Visual Studio in Windows (dual boot).

I have time to start this blog while Ubuntu upgrades a whole release.  If I am lucky I will install a Processing configuration with OpenKinect, Freenect, etc to do some stuff in that world.  Otherwise I revert back to the Windows 10 boot and Visual Studio C# (2010 Express) which is the lowest common denominator of Integrated Development Environments.

Note: Virtually none of the source files, dev kits, drivers, examples, etc are newer than 2016 and most of them were current between 2011 and 2013.  A whole lotta climate change has blown through the tech world since then.