Quote from: mparks on May 21, 2012, 10:47:11 PM
...but it would be cool to get it to be more personalized, It can trigger an even when you walk in the room but not for other people and know that it's you when you ask it questions. That kind of stuff would be very cool.

I don't think the 1.5 api for kinect offers this functionality.  It does not do facial recognition or voice recognition as far as I know.  It can apparently do face tracking, but that is not the same thing.  Of course software exists for both facial and voice recognition, but it is true that this is beyond my ability!

Of course you can introduce yourself with a "catch phrase".  Each person can have their own catch phrase, without actually saying their name.  I could say "hiya hot stuff" and it would know it was me, and not my wife.

If it works well the facial tracking could be very useful.  For one thing, it could only listen when it was able to recognize a face that was looking directly at it.  If it is accurate enough this would work really well.  I don't much like any of the kinect tracking though because it puts too much stress on the CPU which is generally not a good thing for an htpc that is running for long periods of time.  It creates heat, wastes electricity, and potential makes your system less responsive, and could potentially even cause problem with playing video if your system is not powerful enough.

I did not look at the new api yet but I think it still lacks the ability to do dictation, or to learn your accent, which is pretty lame.

Thanks for the insight guys, you make some very good points, it looks like we still have a bit of work to do. Thanks Kalle for that script, i'm going to play with it this weekend and see what I can come up with.

PS. There is a new player in town who is looking to take on Kinect.. It's called Leap Motion ( http://www.leapmotion.com/ ) they're pricing it well so that's a good start.

Leap Motion sounds interesting, but i don't think it's a big advantage for Vox or HTPCs in general, because of the small range it uses to recognise the gestures (in comparison with kinect or a webcam).
but at this price I'm probably going to get one anyway 

yeah, leap doesn't look too useful for your typical couch potato. 

Imagine the possibilities though, for people who know how to use sign language!

Hey I got myself a Kinect for development with my HTPC...  So if any one wants me to test anything, I''m also keen...