Kinect RTSP (Kinect V2 → RTSP) 🎥📡

Turn a Kinect V2 sensor into a small RTSP camera. This tool reads color, infrared and audio from a Kinect V2 and publishes them as RTSP streams using GStreamer.

This project is part of a larger effort to build a baby-monitoring system using the Kinect V2 sensor.

Platform: Windows x64 only.

Table of contents

• Kinect RTSP (Kinect V2 → RTSP) 🎥📡
• Table of contents
• Prerequisites
• CLI options
• Quick start
• RTSP URLs 📡
• Troubleshooting 🧰
• Development notes 🛠️
• Contributing
• License
• Acknowledgements

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Prerequisites

• Kinect for Windows SDK 2.0.
• GStreamer MSVC x86_64 runtime — ensure the bin directory of the runtime is on PATH.

CLI options

• --username <username> Optional RTSP Basic Auth username.
• --password <password> Optional RTSP Basic Auth password.
• --port <port> RTSP server port (default: 8554).

Quick start

1. Install prerequisites.
2. Build the release binary:

cargo build --release

3. Run the server:

# start without auth on default port 8554
.\target\release\kinect-rtsp.exe

# start with Basic Auth and custom port
.\target\release\kinect-rtsp.exe --username alice --password s3cret --port 8554

4. Open a client (VLC, ffplay, etc.) and open one of the RTSP URLs listed below.

RTSP URLs 📡

When the server starts it will log RTSP URLs. Typical examples:

• rtsp://localhost:8554/color
• rtsp://localhost:8554/infrared

If Basic Auth is enabled the client will be prompted for credentials (or you can use an authenticated URL):

• rtsp://alice:***@localhost:8554/color

Troubleshooting 🧰

• Kinect device is not available:

  • Ensure the Kinect sensor is connected and powered.
  • Verify Kinect SDK 2.0 is installed and device appears in Windows Device Manager.
  • Try rebooting after SDK installation.

• GStreamer errors or missing plugins:

  • Confirm you installed the MSVC x86_64 GStreamer runtime, not the MinGW variant.
  • Make sure the runtime bin folder is on PATH (see installation tip above).
  • Run the binary from an elevated PowerShell if you face permission issues.

• Client can't open the stream:

  • Try ffplay to rule out client issues: ffplay rtsp://localhost:8554/color
  • Check application logs — the program prints pipeline and RTSP server status on startup.

Development notes 🛠️

• The program spawns three GStreamer pipelines (color, infrared and audio) and publishes them with appsrc to a local RTSP server.

• See src/main.rs for startup flow and CLI flags. Other key files:

  • src/color.rs — color pipeline handling
  • src/infrared.rs — infrared pipeline handling
  • src/audio.rs / src/audio_frame_buffer.rs — audio capture and buffering
  • src/rtsp_publisher.rs — GStreamer RTSP server wiring

• To increase GStreamer logging during development:

# set verbose GStreamer debug output for current session
$env:GST_DEBUG = "*:3"
cargo run

Contributing

Contributions, bug reports and PRs are welcome. Please:

1. Open an issue describing the problem or feature.
2. Create a small, focused PR with tests or reproduction steps when possible.
3. Keep changes Windows-friendly and document any new external requirements.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Acknowledgements

• Microsoft Kinect for Windows SDK 2.0
• GStreamer project