When Google first introduced their Chromecast device sometime last month with a $35 price tag slapped to it, you could very well say that this is one device which is too good to be true. Well, it does seem as though this HDMI dongle has been pretty popular since its release, and right now as you read this, the Google Play store has listed a two to three week wait for shipments of the Chromecast for those who have already placed their order. The Chromecast is useful since it functions as a streaming middleman of sorts, helping stream content such as YouTube, Netflix and other compatible services from a tablet or smartphone to a big screen TV. It seems that there is more to the Chromecast than meets the eye, as a a programmer has figured out a way to control Chromecast apps on a TV using the Kinect for Windows SDK.
Thanks to Leon Nicholls, who happens to be a software engineer in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, has shown the world his Chromecast-Kinect experiment as you can see above in all of its video glory. A video app was depicted to be streamed to the TV via Chromecast, with the Kinect sensor being connected to a nearby laptop. A special program that Nicholls wrote can interpret the sensor data from the Kinect, taking a few seconds for such data to be sent to the app that runs on the Chromecast. With this, you can use the Kinect to move the video on the screen, and pushing in your hand will result in pausing or resuming the video. Neat, no?