Messages

1

General Discussion / Re: Kinect on E3 and the future

« on: June 25, 2011, 09:49:04 AM »

I can only speak for myself, but I have only rarely seen Vox respond to ambient commands and I have had a microphone very close to speakers.  It is possible of course, but my experience is it is not as big a problem as one may expect.

I too have used a regualr mic with fairly good results, but even one false command can ruin the experience, and I recieved quite a few unwanted pauses, track skips and so on. I also had to shout quite loud to make my commands heard.

It looks like there is some potential for the Kinect, but if you don't already have one, I think the Amulet is still going to be the winner.  The Kinect might be more "fun" to use at first, but in terms of a home theatre setup, the Amulet is just much more practical.  Also, I can take my Amulet out onto the deck with me.  Unless you already own a Kinect, the price is comparable.

I don't know much about the amulet remote but I understand it is a remote with a mic in? Maybe im missing something, but for me the benefits of something like vox commando is to take the remote out of the equation. If I have to carry a remote around with me to make commands, I may as well press the buttons!

Obviously I get that even having to hold a remote VC offers a great shortcut for many commands and is more fun to use, but I think the goal of the software would be to allow a user to make complely natural voice commands with no peripherals on their person. I think that James would agree that this would be the ultimate. Its a shame that kinect is not a fast track solution to that as I think many hoped it would be as it was seemingly designed with this use in mind, however I have hope that further experimentation with the device will unlock new possibilities (paticularly with the gesture commands working in parallel).

All I can do is wish James luck, and look forward to a later release after some experierimentation with kinect with some optimism,

2

General Discussion / Re: Kinect on E3 and the future

« on: June 19, 2011, 05:03:25 AM »

Very excited about Kinect developments - the major barrier for me (and I suspect many) for using Vox Commando is the lack of a microphone that can somehow filter out the ambient noise and stop VC from taking commands from it. Very hopeful that this 'green zone' idea could be the answer

VC functioning freely and naturlly, combined with integrated motion control of xbmc, and i'll be some kind of home media jedi.

3

iTunes / Re: Version 0.863 - iTunes Edition

« on: January 09, 2011, 07:55:17 AM »

Hi James,

Can i integrate these commands with my XBMC version? Is it a matter of copying and pasting something to somewhere?

Cheers

4

XBMC (Old board see 'KODI' above) / Re: Kinect

« on: January 09, 2011, 06:18:14 AM »

Ive been playing with KinEmote and VC for a while now and I definitely think there are some cool ways they can work together.

From VC's perspective, it will be about switching the program that the kinect sends commands to, or the type of action that you want to do, as long as it makes sense to have a gesture.

For example, fast forward and rewind in a video could have an easy 'scroll' gesture. And the volume adjust up down gesture you suggest would also be good.

But for example, I have a program on my computer called qzoom that allows you to zoom in on whatever is on screen by pressing control and adjusting the scroll wheel (good for browsing the web on tv). It would be great if I could say 'Zoom' (or some other command if that conflicts) and VC could switch KinEmote to direct gestures to that program. Then a nice forward/backward gesture could be used to zoom in and out (or a pinch to zoom, if multitouch becomes available)

I think that VC is already customisable enough to do this (I think, though I have no idea how to do this yet), so it would be a matter of KinEmote being able to remember different commands for different programs and responding to VC's requests to switch while staying in the background.

Can VC send commands to different programs in the background? Eg, if I was playing a game and listening to music though iTunes, would commands meant for iTunes be picked up even though that was not the active window?

Edit - Ive started a thread on the KinEmote forum regarding the idea above if anyone is interested http://www.kinemote.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18