Arduino reading in live values

I'm planning to use a Kinect to read in distance values and use Visual Studio 2012 to write a program that takes these values and signals the Arduino to actuate motors connected to it.

Currently, I can get the depth values and which side the closest obstacle is from the Kinect and output it onto a screen, however I am unclear as to how I can make the Arduino receive live streaming data. Should I output the Kinect data to a file and have the Arduino continuously read the file? How can I integrate the Arduino project and call its methods from within my Kinect project?

Also can anyone point me in the direction of how to make the Arduino continuously poll and read a file on a Windows 8 computer connected via USB?

Send the values via the com port to which the Arduino is connected.

The only way an Arduino can "poll" anything is if there is an app on the PC to which commands/requests can be sent. In this case as your using visual studio its up to you to write the app.

(Don't tell us you paid for it please).

Mark

Thanks, I am writing the program on my own.

When you say output to COM, do you mean that the WPF application can read/write directly to the COM that the Arduino is connected to? If so, could you point me in the direction of a tutorial for this?

Thanks.

Look for classes that deal with the com port. The Arduino IDE use one to load your code and to run the serial monitor app there in java (but the IDE for thats free).

WPF?

Mark