Kinected

Picked up an XBox w/Kinect to play with recently to get in on the 3D hacking.

Unfortunately, didn't read enough first and got the bundle (Slim + Kinect) rather than grabbing them separately, so I didn't end up with the Kinect USB adapter/power supply. Turns out Microsoft doesn't like selling the adapters by themselves.

The Kinect is just a USB device that also needs +12V, so Microsoft put together a proprietary jack for it.   There's an excellent pinout breakdown here, and here's a couple of pics of the receiving end w/o shielding.

Anyone know of a manufacturer selling these jacks and plugs in lots of 100 or so?

So, to avoid playing splice-the-cable on the Kinect itself, I shredded a PDP Kinect extension chord.  Bloody expensive things, although they have quite a few active electronics in them (I'm assuming for USB repeating to stay in spec for a really long cable, although haven't checked the chips yet).

Anywho, here's my hacked adapter for now. Connecting it via a short shielded usb cable to an internal USB A jack on a PCI->USB add-on card, and just using the 12V rail off a drive power plug to power it.

 It ain't pretty, but it works.

Edit: Hah! Now they're in stock solo O.o  Well, saved a few days of waiting.