BraveSirRobbin
Moderator
My goodness! Why even bother posting your software product in a DIY (that stands for Do It Yourself btw) forum if you are not going to support their community support? :unsure:
CastleOS - new home automation software with Kinect voice control
- Thread starter ChrisCicc
- Start date
elvisimprsntr
Active Member
I'll say what everyone is thinking...
Maybe because they want tosteal borrow ideas from the real inovators in HA, the open and DIY community? Same goes for most of the kickstarter projects pimping promoting their ill conceived products.
I have no shame!
Maybe because they want to
I have no shame!
ChrisCicc
Active Member
Thank you everyone for your comments on this issue. It's quite clear to me that this is very important to you all (as we expected). That said, I think there has been a mis-communication. We are not saying the community cannot participate in or develop for CastleOS. What we are saying is it won't be through a virtual device method. The enthusiast market is not the only market CastleOS is after, in fact, it's the smallest, but in many ways the most important. So we had to balance our needs to control the user experience (a la Apple) while allowing the community to help us grow the device and protocol support if they'd like.
We really think our model is the best of both worlds, enthusiasts can develop the interface they want, focusing only on the interface and not integrating it to CastleOS, and we'll make sure it's fully and properly integrated. This is the exact same model OpenZWave uses. To end users who are not enthusiasts (i.e. your parents and grandparents), they won't want to download a plugin ("what's a plugin?") in order to make their shiny new Nest or other WiFi thermostat work
Dan: the home automation market is really not competitive at all. In the high end, Crestron and Control4 have a nice battle going on, and an upstart or two trying to elbow in on the action, but below that, the companies you list exist and are players yes, but is it competitive? For various business reasons no, and it's not even close. Just because there is a long list of players, it doesn't mean it's "competitive". In reality, you have a bunch of players trying to do the same thing the same way, and it's ripe for disruption.
Elvis: nothing has been stolen or borrowed, and asking people to develop device and protocol support through our method is not stealing either. In fact, I specifically stated earlier that any code developed for CastleOS can be licensed to CastleOS, so the developer can retain ownership. By your logic, anyone who uses OpenZWave is stealing it. That's not how software development works.
Project_X: you're not the first to suggest a different voice interface, whether it be another microphone, or Raspberry Pi, or Mac/Linux. Ultimately, none of those could ever work on a technical level. Perhaps you need to try the voice interface to understand it, but it's better compared to Star Trek than Siri or Google Voice. They work fundamentally differently, and in the voice world, there is Microsoft's Kinect Speech platform, and there are varying degrees of everything else. Let's put it this way, one of the engineers that builds Nuance's speech recognition engine is very impressed with what CastleOS does with voice. It's too bad that Nuance is technically a competitor, if you know what I mean
Also, just to be clear, this is not a hobby project. It's a real business with investors and employees. For now, I'm the main public voice, but you'll be hearing from more of us on the team soon.
We really think our model is the best of both worlds, enthusiasts can develop the interface they want, focusing only on the interface and not integrating it to CastleOS, and we'll make sure it's fully and properly integrated. This is the exact same model OpenZWave uses. To end users who are not enthusiasts (i.e. your parents and grandparents), they won't want to download a plugin ("what's a plugin?") in order to make their shiny new Nest or other WiFi thermostat work
Dan: the home automation market is really not competitive at all. In the high end, Crestron and Control4 have a nice battle going on, and an upstart or two trying to elbow in on the action, but below that, the companies you list exist and are players yes, but is it competitive? For various business reasons no, and it's not even close. Just because there is a long list of players, it doesn't mean it's "competitive". In reality, you have a bunch of players trying to do the same thing the same way, and it's ripe for disruption.
Elvis: nothing has been stolen or borrowed, and asking people to develop device and protocol support through our method is not stealing either. In fact, I specifically stated earlier that any code developed for CastleOS can be licensed to CastleOS, so the developer can retain ownership. By your logic, anyone who uses OpenZWave is stealing it. That's not how software development works.
Project_X: you're not the first to suggest a different voice interface, whether it be another microphone, or Raspberry Pi, or Mac/Linux. Ultimately, none of those could ever work on a technical level. Perhaps you need to try the voice interface to understand it, but it's better compared to Star Trek than Siri or Google Voice. They work fundamentally differently, and in the voice world, there is Microsoft's Kinect Speech platform, and there are varying degrees of everything else. Let's put it this way, one of the engineers that builds Nuance's speech recognition engine is very impressed with what CastleOS does with voice. It's too bad that Nuance is technically a competitor, if you know what I mean
Also, just to be clear, this is not a hobby project. It's a real business with investors and employees. For now, I'm the main public voice, but you'll be hearing from more of us on the team soon.
BraveSirRobbin
Moderator
I can't agree more!elvisimprsntr said:
ChrisCicc
Active Member
Again: nothing has been stolen or borrowed, and asking people to develop device and protocol support through our method is not stealing either. In fact, I specifically stated earlier that any code developed for CastleOS can be licensed to CastleOS, so the developer can retain ownership. By your logic, anyone who uses OpenZWave is stealing it. That's not how software development works.BraveSirRobbin said:I can't agree more!
Care to clarify why you believe we are stealing ideas?
BraveSirRobbin
Moderator
Look, If you want to help this community with your product, offer specials to CocoonTech members, offer a beta version for testing in exchange for open collaboration and let the beta tester's keep the software. Offer to help them integrate your product with their product/systems, etc...
ChrisCicc
Active Member
BraveSirRobbin said:
So I was thinking, "but I mentioned that earlier" and I realized it was mentioned over at AVS, but not here. My mistake! So here's what we're doing:
When the commercial launch commences, we'll have a MSRP, and a launch promotion at a significantly reduced price, 50% off the MSRP.
In addition, we'll be offering anyone who has used CastleOS during the beta an additional 50% discount off the launch promotion, so that's 75% off the MSRP.
Finally, anyone who actively helps during the beta process with testing or development of drivers will get a free copy (and free updates in the case of driver devs). We've already had a couple users fall in to this group.
Again, we're trying to work with the community, and we truly believe there are many benefits to driver developers with our method that will allow them to write drivers easier than they have in the past. We're willing to work with anyone, provide examples, whatever is needed, we're here to help!
Edit: just to clarify, the beta is available free on our website already.
ddennerline
Active Member
I understand the value in combining IVR and home automation. Who doesn’t find utility in, “Navigate to XYZ address.” What I don’t understand is trying to build yet another home automation system. There are a good number of new companies. Wouldn’t this product stand a better chance of succeeding by not building yet another HA controller.
If the product marketing strategy was to integrate IVR into top tier HA controller, this seems like a bigger win. IVR gets its value when a HA system configuration becomes complex. Complex HA systems are the domain of enthusiast market (at least for now). Why does homeowner need an IVR system to turn on a few lights or control my thermostat?
Lastly, 3-d vision devices (such a Kinect) could have a much more important and valuable role in HA problem space in occupancy sensing and
facial recognition. IMHO, this technology has higher value as compared to IVR. Being able to reconfigure a home’s scene based on presence (or absence) of a person is sort of the nirvana use case.
I wish your company luck in marketing CastleOS.
If the product marketing strategy was to integrate IVR into top tier HA controller, this seems like a bigger win. IVR gets its value when a HA system configuration becomes complex. Complex HA systems are the domain of enthusiast market (at least for now). Why does homeowner need an IVR system to turn on a few lights or control my thermostat?
Lastly, 3-d vision devices (such a Kinect) could have a much more important and valuable role in HA problem space in occupancy sensing and
facial recognition. IMHO, this technology has higher value as compared to IVR. Being able to reconfigure a home’s scene based on presence (or absence) of a person is sort of the nirvana use case.
I wish your company luck in marketing CastleOS.
d.dennerline said:
I've said before and I still think that the barrier for people getting into automation is usability. Reinventing the user interface is exactly what people should be doing. What is a waste is reinventing the hardware, and this does not do that. I don't know if CastleOS is really the step forward that will change anything. Personally, my main experience with voice recognition is with those horrible phone menus, which has not exactly sold me on the idea of voice control. But it's interesting, appeals to some, and I'm curious where it goes.
As far as a business strategy, I can't imagine that there is more money to be made by making a plug-in that depends on people already having purchased an existing system, and that system having a robust and complete enough plug-in system for the plug-in to gain full functionality. I certainly wouldn't take that approach if it was me. And as a customer, then I have to worry about not just one company keeping the software up to date, but two separate companies each keeping their individual components up to date, not breaking the interactions between the two layers, both adding features in sync so you don't have development in one hamstrung in the other. Frankly, the only people that is going to appeal to are people who have already invested in an existing system, and it would be madness to limit your market to that small niche. This does at least use the interface hardware that is already used in most other Insteon systems (the PLM).
And as for 3D vision applications of the Kinest, Chris already said they are working on getting more use out of it, even if he's playing coy about the details.
ChrisCicc
Active Member
RichardU said:
Try it
I'm not going to pull any punches: CastleOS is a game changer for IVR in the home. If you found other IVR systems tedious in the past (and I can certainly understand that), give CastleOS a chance to show you the next generation of IVR. This isn't like any IVR system you've seen before, there is no device to activate or hold, no "start listening" command to give, no button to press. It's just there in the background, listening persistently. It's as non-tedious as it gets.We'll have four new demo videos of the voice interface in real world scenarios soon, the first of which should be ready for posting tomorrow. This should help everyone see how CastleOS is different than other systems you've seen in the past.