As we’ve previously covered on SiliconANGLE (hackers and drivers), the moment Microsoft came out with the Xbox 360 Kinect they apparently fashioned a Pandora’s Box. The homebrew, MAKEr community have really risen to the challenge of the strange enchantment of the hidden capabilities of the Kinect camera. Not to disappoint, Engadget is running a story about “The Greatest Puppet Show on Earth” powered by Kinect,

Hey Xbox 360 Kinect owners, want to spice up those family shadow puppet shows? Then check out the installation prototype created by Emily Gobeille and Theo Watson using an Xbox Kinect connected to a laptop using the libfreenect Kinect drivers and ofxKinect. The openFrameworks system tracks the elbow, wrist, thumb, and tips of the fingers to map a skeleton onto the movement and posture of an animated puppet. And get this: it was made in a day. So just imagine the Kinect homebrew we’ll have around this time next year.

With just a color projector and a Kinect camera we get a gorgeous puppeteer’s mechanism. Imagine the use of this sort of thing for live shows and other performance art. All powered by the Xbox 360 Kinect.

No doubt, some of these enhancements and cheerful exploration of the new peripheral have driven the sudden spite of Xbox sales in Europe. In fact, Eurogamer reported that Xbox sales across the UK doubled after the release of the Kinect.

I wonder if Microsoft knew what they were unleashing on the world when they made this.