How to connect Kinect to a 12v battery

asked 2011-04-05 05:59:14 -0500

alex123
21 ●1 ●2 ●3

updated 2016-10-24 09:03:08 -0500

ngrennan
1 ●1 ●1

Hello there...

i just started my trials with kinect... i have to mount my kinect on my robot which has a 12v battery. i am a completely noob in the field of electronics...so can any one tell me how to proceed.

i have taken a peek at the tutorials over here..... http://www.ros.org/wiki/kinect/Tutori... but could not follow any thing. can any one tell me is there any ready made solution just to connect kinect to a 12v battery?

any simplest solution without any soldering business is really appreciated ...:P

hope i am not wishing too much :P

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in the above tutorial, follow everything until you get to Connecting to Unregulated Voltage, then take two wires and connect them to the positive and negative terminal on the battery with the connectors listed and you're done

mmwise ( 2011-06-13 12:26:55 -0500 )edit

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answered 2011-04-05 06:30:23 -0500

KoenBuys
2314 ●21 ●35 ●56 http://people.mech.kul...

Just cut the cable between the power adaptor and the Kinect connector (not the USB connector). Split the cable in the two wires and strip a small end of them.

Go to the local electronics store and ask for cage clamps (like these: wago clamps, just make sure you have the ones for flexible cable types, not the ones for solid cable. Connect the - from the battery to the white cable from the kinect and the + from the battery (or robot) to the brown one and you are ready without doing any soldering.

I used crimp connectors for this (the same type as used internally in the PR2) but this requires you to buy an expensive crimping tool.

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Do be certain that your input power is actually 12v if you're going this route. Some batteries output higher voltages than listed when fully charged, and I don't know how well the Kinect would handle that.

Murph ( 2011-04-05 06:36:37 -0500 )edit

I agree completely on this. However practically we found out last week on RoboCup challenge that multiple people could use the kinect directly on an unstable battery connection so it has some internal regulator cooping with this, however I would never advise using an unstable power.

KoenBuys ( 2011-04-05 06:40:36 -0500 )edit

Personally I used a DC step-up booster than will convert 6v-42v to a steady 12v, even when the battery is under load.

jacksonkr_ ( 2016-06-30 18:14:22 -0500 )edit

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answered 2011-04-05 06:37:10 -0500

Patrick Bouffard

2254 ●37 ●46 ●57 http://hybrid.eecs.ber...

You're going to need to do some soldering but it's fairly straightforward. However it sounds like you should try and get someone to give you a hand as you definitely don't want to wreck either your Kinect, the battery, or yourself.

I can offer up as proof of concept though the Kinect-on-quadrotor work that I did (see this page). In my work, the Kinect is connected directly to a (nominally) 12V 8000 mAh LiPo battery, in parallel with the quadrotor's power leads. It works great, no voltage regulation was needed. YMMV though, especially using a different type of battery.

I recall seeing some pinout information, probably on the OpenKinect wiki, take a look there and you might want to try their mailing list as well--your question is not specific to ROS after all.

Good luck!