How To Speak to CastleOS & Kinect 

CastleOS allows you to speak to your home using a Microsoft Kinect and advanced natural language processing. The following is a sample of the types of speech CastleOS will recognize, please note you don't need to be perfectly precise in speaking these command examples. Also, remember to prefix all commands with "computer".

Devices (lighting, appliances, etc):
On/Off:
- turn on/off [device name]
- turn/set [device name] on/off
- [device name] on/off
- turn on/off [device name 1] and [device name 2]
- turn/set [device name 1] and [device name 2] on/off

Dimming (note: there are a great many variations of saying dim/brighten a light, the list is long and not included here for brevity, but they do work in CastleOS):
- dim [device name] to/by [dim percent]
- [device name] to/by [dim percent]
- dim [device name 1] and [device name 2] to/by [dim percent]
- [device name] and [device name 2] to/by [dim percent]

Master Lights (in these commands, the specific device is not mentioned, and CastleOS assumes the master light set in the Kinect Configurator):
- turn on/off the lights
- turn the lights on/off
- dim the lights to/by [dim percent]
- lights [dim percent]

Groups:
- turn on/off [group name]
- turn on/off [group name] lights
- turn/set [group name] on/off
- turn/set [group name] lights on/off
- [group name] lights

Scenes:
- turn on/off [scene name]
- turn/set [scene name] on/off
- activate/deactivate [scene name]

Thermostats:
- various natural language commands for getting the current/ambient internal temperature
Example 1: computer get the current temperature.
Example 2: computer what's the temp?
- get/what's the cool/heat setpoint (and other natural language variations)
Example 1: computer what's the cool setpoint?
Example 2: computer get cool setpoint.
- various natural language commands for getting the outdoor temperature (note: if the thermostat does not report the outdoor temperature, it will default to the local weather instead)
Example 1: computer what is the outside temp?
- various natural language commands for turning on/off the A/C/air conditioning/heat/fan
Example 1: computer turn on the air conditioning
Example 2: computer change the thermostat mode to heat
Advanced Features:

Timer - CastleOS allows a countdown timer to be created. This is good for cooking, a reminder to tune to your favorite show, etc. You can control the time as follows:
- create a timer for [number of minutes] minutes
- create and start a timer for [number of minutes] minutes
- start timer
- restart timer
- pause timer
- resume timer
- clear timer
- reset timer

Example questions you can ask the timer:
- what's the remaining time?
- how much time is left?
- how long was the timer set for?

Media Client Playback Control (for DirecTV, Emby, Plex, and Kodi):
Note 1: not all of the following commands work on all playback devices.
Note 2: each of the following commands can be followed with the following words and phrases: playback, video, display, music, show, movie, the video, the display, the music, the show, the movie.

- play
- pause
- unpause
- resume
- stop
- rewind
- fast forward
- previous
- next
- replay
- next
- advance
- record
- up
- down
- left
- right
- select
- back
- menu
- on screen display
- power
- power on
- power off
- format
- guide
- enter
- exit
- info
- channel up
- channel down

Channel Tuning (for DirecTV):
Note: Requests for a specific channel number can be started with variations of "tune channel", "change channel", "tune station", "change the station to", "change the channel to", etc.
Example 1: computer change the channel to 188.


edited by ccicchitelli on 10/25/2015