Webcams!
They're a useful thing to have on occasion. Obviously I would recommend keeping your face off the internet if you care at all for your privacy. I tend to not my show face much on the web for that reason.
However, it is the 2020s. We're all in the era of video calls for more official matters like work and school. So because of that, I need a computer with a camera for college
I've had an Xbox 360 Kinect sitting around for years, and I decided to make use of it to give my PC a webcam
To start, I needed to first figure out a way to fix the base that got snapped off.
For some ungodly reason, Microsoft decided to use the tiniest possible torx screws to secure the base on. I did not have any tiny enough torx screwdrivers to get out the screws, so...
I drilled out the screws ^w^
Then I needed to get off the motorized base, as I was just gonna rip it out as it served zero function for me. And... the screws stripped. So.....
I drilled out those screws too, and tossed the motor in the trash
At this point I tested to make sure the Kinect would work with Linux as a webcam. Thankfully it did, and it even immediately showed up as a camera to the OS, so I didn't need to do any extra configuration
I won't go into detail on how I got the plastic the rest of the way off, but, I'll just show an image of the tools I used to give you a good idea
It got messy
But I got it off!
After this, I needed to figure out two problems. I needed to first figure out some way to mount the Kinect to my monitor stand
Thankfully, I had a two-by-four and a spare monitor mount, so I was able to rig together this to put the Kinect on
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After that, I had to get the stand re-attached to the Kinect. To do this, I grabbed my soldering iron and melted together the plastic
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Then I hot glued some change into the bottom to make sure the base had enough weight to not tip over super easily
And it all went back together quite well ^w^
After a bit of experimentation, I decided to also add a plank of wood and shim to get the Kinect a bit more stable, rather than just sitting directly on top of the two-by-four
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At this point, it's pretty much done. But it needed one final touch...
Perfection ^w^