#skeltrack

I may just be bad at autoconf but there was a problem where somehow the makefile didn't always link against libgio-2.0 when needed (for the tests specifically). This webpage was fairly helpful, but I found it a few hours into wrestling with SkelTrack.

First build GFreenect (https://github.com/elima/GFreenect.git):

$ ./autogen.sh $ make $ sudo make install

Next we'll build SkelTrak (https://github.com/joaquimrocha/Skeltrack.git)

Package requirements (at least the ones I didn't already have):

libtool

gobject-introspection

intltool

gtk-doc-tools (automake tools specifically are needed)

libgtk-3-0-doc (gtk-doc of some kind)

Running the scripts in the proper way is handled by autogen.sh:

$ autogen.sh

You may run into issues with the tests not building (libgio-2.0 DSO missing from command line).  I spent hours trying to fix this, but I couldn't fix the auto-generation of the makefiles to include the proper link flag (and couldn't get it manually specified by setting extra LDFLAGS).  To fix this, instead of the above line, run:

$ autogen.sh --enable-tests=no

then do the normal:

$ make $ sudo make install

and then you just mess with your library paths and include paths (I just moved things around to match how I thought they should be structured) until the example builds.  You will need to change line 217 (in my copy, I might have removed a whitespace line or 3) from plain "LDFLAGS=" to the following in the example Makefile:

217 LDFLAGS=-lgobject-2.0 -lglib-2.0 -lclutter-1.0 -lcairo -lgfreenect-0.1

To build properly with skeltrack you will need to also add /usr/local/lib (wherever make install dumped the libraries) by running:

$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/lib

If unsure about where libgfreenect and libskeltrack are, run:

Skeltrack is a Free and Open Source Software library by Igalia for tracking the human skeleton joints from depth images. It is implemented with GLib and uses plain mathematics to detect the human skeleton and although it does not use any database, it was inspired by Andreas Baak's paper: A Data-Driven Approach for Real-Time Full Body Pose Reconstruction from a Depth Camera. Skeltrack devs have recorded very cool videos showing Gnome Shell and Linux games being controlled through gestures. One or both hands are used control the mouse pointer, perform clicks, drag things around and simulates a pinch gesture which adjusts the zoom level. Hands can be also interpreted as if holding a steering wheel, making racing games so much fun.