Multi-Room Kinect Setup Example

[surovich]

Hello Homeseer People -

** Its Vimeo, so they have to render still - They should be live by 10:40PM EST 1/12/2015 **

It seems some people were interested in my Kinect Setup, so I did three quick videos - after my surgery this week I will get some better videos with more features, but this is the start. I have 5 Kinect's in different rooms, they connect using the following :

(1) Garage, Connected using iView 7" Tablet
(1) Living Room - Connected to a central Mini PC in the basement using USB
(1) Family Room - Connected to the same PC as the Living room, with room for 4 more Kinect's if needed.
(1) Computer Room/Office - Connected iView 7" Tablet
(1) Bedroom - Connected using a Dell Venue 8

*** Sorry I had my Phone in Portrait - I should have used Landscape, but it works for now ***

The iView were on sale for $59 before Christmas at Newegg - So I took a chance, and I'm glad I did - They are awesome for this, and they use about 3 Watts of power with the screen on. They are NOT good for general use since they have a 1024x768 screen and scale to 1280x1024 (looks OK, but not for long usage)

The three videos are :

https://vimeo.com/116617792

This is the Living Room example - Shows lights on/off, Weather forecast, Nest Controls, and Nest check. This is connected to the mini PC in the basement.

https://vimeo.com/116617866

This is the iView Tablet in the Computer Room/Office. I talk about the tablet for a bit, and then a lights on/off, Philips Hue Control, and weather (which I passed a bad Variable so it didn't find the day... But you get the idea)

https://vimeo.com/116618146

Kinect in the bedroom using a Dell Venue 8 - Same type of examples, mostly devices on/off.

The weather script is something I wrote last year for my robot, NAO by Aldebaran Robotics - so I converted it a bit from Python to VB for my home automation. You can ask for a weekday name, today, tonight, tomorrow, or ask for "Weather for the next x days". (Where x can be 1 up to 5 days). The examples where I say Hello and it says "I heard this from this room". Is my start of a generic script where I will put a ton of voice commands that could come from any room - Keep them central rather than a ton of events that have a bunch of OR/IF for each Kinect ... Gets messy.

** Oh, I have to add a video from my Light show this year - https://vimeo.com/114355945 **

Any questions, please let me know ....

[kenrad]

surovich,

The only video that shows up is the one of your christmas light show thee rest don't. You are a LOR guy too very cool I just got started with it this year and it is really cool.

What did you use for the display screen in the middle of your show playing the video.


Cheers Ken

[kideon]

I see you have the wynds pronunciation there too lol. How are you doing the day for day forecast?

[Malosa]

nice setup !

i found the IVeiw Suprapad i700qw 8.1 windows ( does it work also on there ?) And did you install the speakerclient on the tablet ?
because i wanted to buy HP t5730 for 20$ a client.


wow that christmass decoration ! very nice done !! respect for you !

kind regards

[Rupp]

nice setup !

i found the IVeiw Suprapad i700qw 8.1 windows ( does it work also on there ?) And did you install the speakerclient on the tablet ?
because i wanted to buy HP t5730 for 20$ a client.


wow that christmass decoration ! very nice done !! respect for you !

kind regards

With only 1GB of Ram I'm not sure it can even run Windows 8 and if it does I'm not sure the experience will be worth the hassle.

[surovich]

Rupp - Actually 8 runs very well on 1GB of RAM running Web and Office - The max memory I have seen in use was 750MB or so - I'm very happy with them for this - I did also use it for a week to test it out and it was good (Screen on the other hand .... Not the best). But with an HStouch screen it looks pretty good. The SSD Is pretty quick on it and that helps, but I can do a video of some multi tasking to show how it works - I Have been very impressed - but fort $100 or so you can get a 2GB model from another vendor. I am also Going to one of the Intel USB PC's - Looks like a thumb drive but its a full Quad core PC with 2GB of RAM - it should be here next week, along with another 9.7" Tablet to play with that dual boots Android and Windows 8.1 (2GB on Board as well)

Malosa - That's the one I'm using ... There is another model out there with 2GB of RAM, I'll dig that one up - Its $100 and I forget who makes it. I do run the speaker client them as well. Thanks for the Display Compliments

Kideon - I KNOW - That's killing me - Ive tried so many spellings to make it sound correct and nothing works ....

Kenrad - Yeah, the videos were rendering still (Vimeo can be slow) - I'm actually a Vixen guy, I prefer it over LOR by light years ... But yeah, same idea. The middle of the house was done using 2400 Pixels controlled by the E1.31 Protocol. It worked out very well, I was surprised and love what you can do with it. It was a lot of soldering and wire, but WELL worth the work.

Heres the Bedroom example on YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6sX...ature=youtu.be

[surovich]

Kideon - On the Script question, what do you mean day for day?

Right now, You can ask for

Weather for .....

Today
Tonight
Tomorrow
Day of week
Next xx days

All done parsing an XML return feed - Just need to register for an API (free) - I think it works well and the API hasn't changed in a year, so I feel confident that I can post it for people to use... Just need to clean it up a bit.

I would really like to make it a plugin, Just haven't had time - so a script will work.

In the Event for it, I simply put :

[weather] [forecast] for [the] [next] <today|tomorrow|monday|tuesday|wednesday|thursday|friday|sat urday|sunday|two|three|four|five> [days]

Then I parse the Kinect variable for information.

[kideon]

Could you share the cleaned up script? I'm using weatherxml and can probably do something with that or just mirror yours just for this application.

[surovich]

Hey Kideon -

Sure I'll clean it up a little and I can PM you - Id like it used in a few more places before I release it to all - So you can be my first use case. Overall, Ive been using it for a year and 1/2 - a few months on my Robot and the last few months on HS3 with Kinect's.

I'm off tomorrow, depending on pain from my surgery today, I might clean it up tomorrow ... Wont need much, but it does have some unused code carried over from the Python and Robot.

[kenrad]

Surovich,

I would be very interested in your script as well for the weather.

Are you also using one for the control of your nest. I would be interested in that one as well and examples of how you are setting up your events for these

I am currently running 5 instances of the Kinect plugin in my home and probably more to come really liking the voice control and reliability with this plug in

Cheers Ken

[surovich]

Kenrad -

Sure no problem on the Weather Script - I may just send it out without a lot of cleanup - not sure what the pain meds might do to my editing . (Had surgery for a Hockey injury yesterday - just outpatient but still sore)

The Nest events work very well with little setup. So on the device for High Temp Change, I just use Spuds voice control to set it.

Then for the talk back on settings, a quick event when the next has a change, delayed by a few seconds. I had to delay it or if you changed the temp from say 67 to 70, it would announce 68, 69, and 70. So I wait a bit do it just announces the last one.

And for the one statement to see what its set to, I'm using virtual devices I assigned to the device in Homeseer (third picture) with the speak command in the event. This was before I learned of a new way, which is better than making virtual devices, I'll change that later. But for now, I'll show you the one with the Virtual Devices. (fourth picture)

Now the way you should do it, to skip making virtual devices is to use the built in functions in Homeseer for the device and then values. So I do this for Occupancy with the Kinect's.

Just in case you haven't used the variables before, you can check in the homeseer 3 programming PDF - but You can find the device number in the device properties. So, using $$DVR:97 is a built in Homeseer variable - the $$DVR says to use the Reference ID from the Device, so for the living room occupancy count I call $$DVR:97 (See last Picture).

Hope that helps some .... I'll work on getting the two of you the weather and you can test. It a bit for me before I publish it. I think it works well. I am adding some sound effects to it next, so if the forecast is calling for Rain it will play a rainfall sound, windy - a gust of wind sound, etc.

[kenrad]

Awesome looks like i have some events to work on today.

[surovich]

Sent you a PM - (and Kideon) .... Reply to it and I'll shoot over my new script. I added code to find the room you ask from and direct the reply to only that room.

[Uncle Michael]

(1) Computer Room/Office - Connected iView 7" Tablet

Any questions, please let me know ....

In the video you showed a device that allows the tablet to charge and act as a USB host at the same time. Is that commercially available or did you make it yourself? All I could find that was similar was a Kickstart project.

[TomTom]

surovich,

Wow great video's. Thanks for taking the time to do it esp with surgery and all. Makes it easier to understand and carry out.

I'm new to VR and Kinect.
In your first post you said that two of your room the Kinects were connected to a mini pc. My hs3 pro mini-itx machine(dedicated) specs has the following specs. Intel Atom D525 Dual Core - 1.68 GHz and 2Gigs Ram and run XP. So I should be able to use it without problems right?

I read that Kinect Plugin needs win 7 or 8. Does the HS3 machine need to be running Win 7 or 8, or just the Client?
Thanks