ccicchitelli

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1/6/2013 Topic: CPU pegged at 100%? Chris Cicchitelli Administrator	OK, please post your log again...is the config file the same as I downloaded earlier?
1/6/2013 Topic: CPU pegged at 100%? Chris Cicchitelli Administrator	The events on the config file look good, and I have the same event structure set up here to test, but with TriggerLinc's instead of motion sensors, and they don't cause a problem. So either this is motion sensor specific, or something else...
1/6/2013 Topic: CPU pegged at 100%? Chris Cicchitelli Administrator	OK I'll check that entire codeset for a lack of null value checks. Clearly some snuck through... I looked at the log, it activated the event, sent the command to turn on the lights (which you say worked), and then...nothing. No error, no response message received, no message retry attempt. One of those should have happened. Can you check the Windows Application error log and see if .NET threw an error?
1/6/2013 Topic: CPU pegged at 100%? Chris Cicchitelli Administrator	I have another favor to ask (sorry!!!), please post the stack trace from the second energy error. It looks like it's something different than before...
1/6/2013 Topic: CPU pegged at 100%? Chris Cicchitelli Administrator	Are other features working just not energy? Or do no pages load? Is it still frozen from the motion sensor? By the way, I'm in the process of setting up my test motion sensor so I can try and replicate the issue here... Edit: it is the portal, so it looks like it can't access the Core Service again. Probably still frozen from the motion sensor? edited by ccicchitelli on 1/6/2013
1/6/2013 Topic: CPU pegged at 100%? Chris Cicchitelli Administrator	Nick Bento wrote: I rebooted after the motion sensor issue, as that froze everything. After that energy issue it kills the server. And it still doesn't show any data (wondering if maybe I need to let the server run longer to propagate some data?) I'm going to do some more testing on the motion sensor as well. OK, try going to devices.aspx instead of portal.aspx. Portal has some energy display on there, so I want to see if it's just energy or something larger. If devices load, it's just energy. I think data propagation would solve this issue (as the issue has not been encountered at any of our existing test houses), but at the same time you shouldn't have to wait, CastleOS is designed to accommodate that, we just have a bug in there somewhere...
1/6/2013 Topic: CPU pegged at 100%? Chris Cicchitelli Administrator	Nick Bento wrote: Is there a way for me to see what the status of the motion sensor is? Do you mean query it on demand to see its status? Or just see what the current status in the log is?
1/6/2013 Topic: CPU pegged at 100%? Chris Cicchitelli Administrator	Nick Bento wrote: Either I guess. Was going to see if the reason it isn't turning off was related to it's status or not. Seems it's frozen up again for some reason. It's completely fine before the event trigger. I'm pretty sure it's realated to message processing, rather than device status. I'd recommend disabling that event for the moment, I'll get my test setup built and see if I can fix this tonight...
1/7/2013 Topic: CPU pegged at 100%? Chris Cicchitelli Administrator	Just wanted to check in...I'm working on this now. Sorry I didn't get it done yet, I had to do some marketing stuff in preparation for the formal announcement of CastleOS via press release tomorrow!
1/7/2013 Topic: CPU pegged at 100%? Chris Cicchitelli Administrator	Nick Bento wrote: Another Bug I've found, for some reason I can't create a scene. I see a couple things in the Error.xml file, and have attached it. Sorry for all the work o: This should fix that issue. Same bug as the groups. I'm embarrassed these slipped through! You'll need to stop the service manually, copy this to C:\Program Files (x86)\CastleOS\CastleOS Core Service, and then restart the service. Still working on the motion sensor issue...
1/7/2013 Topic: CPU pegged at 100%? Chris Cicchitelli Administrator	Nick Bento wrote: Thanks! I tested energy Eye as a replacement for the issue, seemed to work in terms of turning off the devices. I'm also trying a factory reset on the sensor to eliminate any possible conflicts. Awesome! Did you use the motion sensor as the EnergyEye sensor? Or the light switch itself? Both would in theory work...
1/8/2013 Topic: Verify plm Chris Cicchitelli Administrator	eric o wrote: Is there a good resource to know which of my X10 devices support i1,i2 and i2CS. I have dozens of X10 lamp and appliance modules purchased over the years. Also does i1 or i2 determine if a module support bi-directional status, or not? edited by vikinge on 1/8/2013 i1, i2, and i2CS are Insteon devices. For X10, when adding a device, select X10 from the protocol list. It does still use the Insteon PLM to transmit X10 signals, however. Also, when adding an Insteon device, the Insteon version (i1, i2, i2CS) is automatically detected by CastleOS.
1/8/2013 Topic: CPU pegged at 100%? Chris Cicchitelli Administrator	Housekeeping: a fix for this issue was rolled in to the release that is now available in the downloads section.
1/9/2013 Topic: How To Access CastleOS from Outside Your Home Chris Cicchitelli Administrator	In order to access CastleOS from outside your home there is one setting on your home router that will need to be changed. It's called Port Forwarding, and it essentially tells your router to route a message received from the outside to the proper computer (i.e. the one running CastleOS) on the inside. To do so, you'll need one piece of information first: the address of the computer CastleOS is running on. In order to get that address, please follow these steps: 1) click the start menu 2) type "cmd" (without quotes) in to the search box on the start menu, press enter when cmd.exe is displayed 3) when the Command Prompt opens, type "ipconfig" (without quotes) and press enter 4) look for the line that says "IPv4 Address", and write down the numbers listed After this, you are ready to change the settings in your router. You will need to add port forwarding for only one port: port number 80, to be forwarded to the address you wrote down in step 4. As each router has different configuration methods, it's impossible to list them all here, but thankfully there is a website that maintains step-by-step guides for most routers in existence: http://portforward.com/routers.htm Please follow that guide to enable port forwarding for port 80 to the address you've listed. edited by ccicchitelli on 5/9/2013
1/10/2013 Topic: How-To Guide Requests Chris Cicchitelli Administrator	Joseph Sivulka wrote: Hello: I'm also interested in setting up a system with Insteon but have yet to purchase any products. I did notice on the Smarthome website that they have dualband USB interface. Aside from whatever remote components are installed (Outletlinc Dimmer, Switchlinc dimmer, etc) that would be the only thing needed in conjunction with CastleOS, correct? Related, do you know if this will play well with powerline networking? I've yet to try powerline but need to get a CAT5 cable to my basement from the 2nd floor and would love to use the simplistic powerline solution. I have friends that currently use it and say they can stream HD content from their remote PC to an Xbox used as an extender, but if it interferes with what the CastleOS software provides, I may have to rethink. Joe Hey Joe! You are correct, a dual band USB or serial PLM or an Insteon USB adapter is all you need for CastleOS to talk to your house. We recommend the new USB adapter due to it's compact size. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that because it's RF only, you'll need at least one dual-band device like a SwitchLinc if you have powerline-only devices in your network as well. But that's a pretty easy requirement to meet, and usually, it's met by default just by building out an Insteon network. As far as powerline networking, one of our test homes does use Insteon and powerline networking together and they work without issue. But I can't promise that for all brands and models, I don't have enough data to say.
1/10/2013 Topic: Other microphones? Chris Cicchitelli Administrator	Tom McKearney wrote: I am curious why there is a restriction to the Kinect. Especially since you're only using a subset of its capabilities. Can I use a different microphone with your software? Unfortunately, no. The audio capabilities in the Kinect go beyond just it's microphone. There are actually four microphones in it, with a complex signal processor that does many things to improve the speech recognition accuracy. It can focus in on the direction of speech, isolate background noises, remove audio outputs like TV and music from the microphone inputs, etc. In other words, the high accuracy of the CastleOS voice control platform is entirely dependent on this specific technology - it's the first and only in the world to offer such a capability. Also, we plan to take advantage of the other capabilities in the Kinect for our security features, which will be coming in a future release. Stay tuned!
1/10/2013 Topic: Kinect in every room? Chris Cicchitelli Administrator	Tom McKearney wrote: In order to have voice capability in my whole house, would I need a Kinect in every room? Could I possibly have one Kinect in a closet with something like an intercom (with good quality)? I have a big house and don't want PCs with Kinects everywhere. Understood! If you want to put a Kinect in every room, or really anywhere without a PC, you can do so with USB over Ethernet. The current beta release only supports one Kinect per computer, but very soon that will be upgraded to support any number of Kinects per PC. So you would have one central PC, and then run USB signals to other rooms in the house via Ethernet cables, and plug the Kinects in to those. We'll be releasing the capability formally in the coming weeks. If your house is already wired for Ethernet, you'd only need to purchase the Kinects and the USB/Ethernet adapter for each room. edited by ccicchitelli on 1/19/2013
1/10/2013 Topic: Open API? Chris Cicchitelli Administrator	We fully agree with you. CastleOS was designed from the start to be the opposite of the proprietary model. The CastleOS API is already exposed, although at the moment unsupported. It's a standards-based web service protected by a username and password. The only restriction to someone using the API is knowing the encryption scheme it uses, which we'd be happy to give out to any interested parties, but for obvious reasons, haven't publicly posted
1/11/2013 Topic: How To Speak to CastleOS & Kinect Chris Cicchitelli Administrator	CastleOS allows you to speak to your home using a Microsoft Kinect and advanced natural language processing. The following is a sample of the types of speech CastleOS will recognize, please note you don't need to be perfectly precise in speaking these command examples. Also, remember to prefix all commands with "computer". Devices (lighting, appliances, etc): On/Off: - turn on/off [device name] - turn/set [device name] on/off - [device name] on/off - turn on/off [device name 1] and [device name 2] - turn/set [device name 1] and [device name 2] on/off Dimming (note: there are a great many variations of saying dim/brighten a light, the list is long and not included here for brevity, but they do work in CastleOS): - dim [device name] to/by [dim percent] - [device name] to/by [dim percent] - dim [device name 1] and [device name 2] to/by [dim percent] - [device name] and [device name 2] to/by [dim percent] Master Lights (in these commands, the specific device is not mentioned, and CastleOS assumes the master light set in the Kinect Configurator): - turn on/off the lights - turn the lights on/off - dim the lights to/by [dim percent] - lights [dim percent] Groups: - turn on/off [group name] - turn on/off [group name] lights - turn/set [group name] on/off - turn/set [group name] lights on/off - [group name] lights Scenes: - turn on/off [scene name] - turn/set [scene name] on/off - activate/deactivate [scene name] Thermostats: - various natural language commands for getting the current/ambient internal temperature Example 1: computer get the current temperature. Example 2: computer what's the temp? - get/what's the cool/heat setpoint (and other natural language variations) Example 1: computer what's the cool setpoint? Example 2: computer get cool setpoint. - various natural language commands for getting the outdoor temperature (note: if the thermostat does not report the outdoor temperature, it will default to the local weather instead) Example 1: computer what is the outside temp? - various natural language commands for turning on/off the A/C/air conditioning/heat/fan Example 1: computer turn on the air conditioning Example 2: computer change the thermostat mode to heat Advanced Features: Timer - CastleOS allows a countdown timer to be created. This is good for cooking, a reminder to tune to your favorite show, etc. You can control the time as follows: - create a timer for [number of minutes] minutes - create and start a timer for [number of minutes] minutes - start timer - restart timer - pause timer - resume timer - clear timer - reset timer Example questions you can ask the timer: - what's the remaining time? - how much time is left? - how long was the timer set for? Media Client Playback Control (for DirecTV, Emby, Plex, and Kodi): Note 1: not all of the following commands work on all playback devices. Note 2: each of the following commands can be followed with the following words and phrases: playback, video, display, music, show, movie, the video, the display, the music, the show, the movie. - play - pause - unpause - resume - stop - rewind - fast forward - previous - next - replay - next - advance - record - up - down - left - right - select - back - menu - on screen display - power - power on - power off - format - guide - enter - exit - info - channel up - channel down Channel Tuning (for DirecTV): Note: Requests for a specific channel number can be started with variations of "tune channel", "change channel", "tune station", "change the station to", "change the channel to", etc. Example 1: computer change the channel to 188. edited by ccicchitelli on 10/25/2015
1/11/2013 Topic: Open API? Chris Cicchitelli Administrator	Nick Bento wrote: I'd be very interested in this! I'm curious what the api allows for control and interaction between custom programs/services That's the idea. CastleOS' ultimate goal is to interface with everything digital in your home. In most cases, that means adding support to CastleOS for the device in question. In some cases, it might be the opposite, and the API will be used for that.