You can, of course, do the job by cutting the cable and wiring a 12V supply and a standard USB connector. If you look at the end of the connector pin 1 is next to the beveled corner with pints 2 to 5 next to it and pin 6 below it. If you can't wait for the unit to be back in stock or if you want to make something custom then it is quite easy to work out the pin connections: Pin At the moment there are no 3rd party adaptors but this is likely to change.
The unit costs less than $20 but be warned they seem to go out of stock very quickly. To find the appropriate powersupply search on Kinect Sensor Power Supply. Then you should be able to select a local version of the store from the list if you are not in the US. At the moment these are only available from the Microsoft store. If you have bought a Kinect with a recent XBox as a bundle then you will need to buy the adaptor/power supply. Older XBOXes don't have the special connector and they come with an external power supply which has an adaptor to convert the Kinect plug into a standard USB connector and power supply connector. The connector used is a proprietary connector designed to allow the Kinect to be plugged into the new black XBOX 360 without the use of an external powersupply. If you look at the plug on the end of the cable that come out of the Kinect you will realise that what you have looks like a USB connector but not quite. I'm going to describe the software side from the point of view of Windows 7/Vista but the principles apply to Linux and other versions of Windows. So let's work our way thought connecting, installing and testing the basic Kinect/OpenNI PC setup. Of course if you have bought the reference hardware kit from PrimeSense then everything just works with their drivers.
KINECT DRIVERS INSTALL
KINECT DRIVERS DRIVER
However changing the driver is a matter of modifying configuration files and this has been done for the Kinect and made available as a project "fork"(or subproject). The only problem is that the drivers that they supply are for their own reference hardware and not the Kinect. PrimeSense has made all this available as an open source project called OpenNI. PrimeSense has made available a set of drivers, and API and a "middleware" program called NITE which does things like skeletonization and other higher level processing. If you want to know how Kinect works then see: All About Kinect. This is semi-official as PrimeSense is the company that created the basic hardware that Microsoft used to create the Kinect sensor. I'm also going to use the semi-official Kinect software that PrimeSense has made available. In this article I'm going to explain the basics of getting started with the Kinect - up to running some basic demos.
KINECT DRIVERS HOW TO
The only problem is that as Microsoft never intended you to use the Kinect with the PC it can be difficult to find out how to do it. It's great fun to play with and there are lots of applications. This is a full 3D scanner that can be used to digitise a scene and recognise elements within it.
The most fun game on the block at the moment is the Kinect - no, not a game that uses the Kinect, the Microsoft Kinect itself. This article explains what each piece of the software package does and how to connect and use Kinect with a PC. Joining in the Kinect fun can be difficult because of the lack of clear instructions on how to get it all working.