How To Setup the Kinect Service 

Downloading & Installation
1) First, download the Kinect Service from our download page. The downloaded file will be called "Install the CastleOS Kinect Service.exe", please open it
2) Proceed through the (very simple) setup wizard at your own pace, when complete, the CastleOS Kinect Configurator will display.

Initial Configuration
1) After the Configuration displays, you will be presented with the "Powered by CastleOS" welcome screen. First, press "kinect" on the main menu, between "welcome" and "media". The Basic Settings screen will display.
2) Enter the username and password for an account you have created in CastleOS (that is not the same as your account here on CastleOS.com), and press "Verify Credentials".
3) The Configurator will now attempt to contact CastleOS and verify your credentials. If it is unable to contact the Core Service, for instance because they are not installed on the same machine, it will popup asking for the IP address of the Core Service. If your username or password is wrong, it will ask you to try again.
4) After authenticating, the Master Controls options will be enabled. First, you'll need to select the master lights. Master lights are the lights that are activated when you say "computer lights on" instead of "computer turn the bedroom lights on". It's a shortcut for the immediate room, essentially. You have a choice of have a single device, an entire group, or a custom scene being activated and deactivated when you use a master lighting command. Select whichever you prefer here, if you have not added any devices to CastleOS yet, you'll have to do so before selecting these options.
5) After the master lights, you can set the master thermostat, if you have a digital thermostat in your home. Like lighting, you can control a thermostat by name, or with shortcut commands to the master thermostat. If you don't have a thermostat, you can skip this.
6) If you are using the Kinect Service with anything other than an American English accent, you can choose another accent in the Language/Accent list.
7) Finally, press Save and (re)start the Kinect Service to save your settings and start the service. Depending on the computer, it can take several seconds to complete the loading process before the system will respond to verbal commands.

Advanced (Optional) Settings
1) To access the advanced settings, select "ADVANCED" next to "BASIC" on the menu at the top.
2) If you would like to try Acoustic Echo Cancellation (AEC), you can enable it here. AEC cancels the audio coming out of your speakers from the audio going in to the Kinect microphone. This allows you to speak and be heard over background noise such as music. However, this feature is several incompatibilities with various audio formats, so your mileage may vary. If you enable it and find that CastleOS stops responding to voice commands after a period of time, you will need to disable the feature. We expect this to be fixed as the Kinect platform matures.
3) Noise Suppression runs algorithms to remove background noise from audio input, for instance the hum from a fan, a distant conversation, etc. It is highly recommended this stay enabled.
4) The "Computer" prefix, i.e. "Computer, turn on the lights" can be changed to another word or phrase, or disabled altogether. For obvious reasons, changing either option could drastically hurt recognition accuracy, but you can play around with these as you see fit.
5) The command thresholds are the level at which CastleOS will act on a recognized command. Each time CastleOS detects sounds that could be speech, it runs it through the language processor, and outputs the most likely result. Adjusting these values lower would mean that more commands would be recognized, but mistakes and false positives would also increase. Increasing these values would mean mistakes and false positives decrease, but commands may be missed. These levels can be adjusted at will.
6) Finally, to save your settings, press the Save and (re)start the Kinect Service button.

Media & Security
These features are under development, check back soon!
edited by ccicchitelli on 2/23/2013
edited by ccicchitelli on 3/5/2013
edited by ccicchitelli on 3/5/2013