I just want to share my experience in the hope that it may help others. I have 2 remote Kinects: one in the family room and one in the bedroom.
Setup #1 - My original setup: Each Kinect was connected to a WinBook tablet. Others have reported this setup with WinBook tablets in this forum. I copied all the needed files for setting up the Kinects remotely and also for the HS3 speaker client. For the 1st Kinect, I used the TW700 running Windows 8.1. This one doesn’t have enough memory (it has 16GB Flash Storage) to upgrade to Windows 10 (although some have reported doing this). With the Windows 8.1 OS that came with it, I had to scrub it out once because free memory was running low. The 7” screen is also rather small. Most of the time, I use TeamViewer to remotely access the tablets from my Mac or PC. It’s free and works well. For the 2nd Kinect, I went for the larger TW100. With more flash memory (32 GB), I had a bit more flexibility of loading utilities on it, and it also has a 10” screen. I kept Windows 8.1 on this one also. To work with the Kinects, I had to make sure that the tablets were on all the time. Therefore, I disabled sleep and hibernate mode, and on the TW100, I also had to disable the hybrid sleep mode. The tablets were always powered on, I was always logged in, and the screen was dimmed to the maximum. The Kinects worked fine most of the time. Several times however, the Kinects didn’t respond and when checking the tablets, I found the screen blank. I had to wake then up with the power button. It is especially a problem with the TW700. I am not sure why. Another drawback was that even dimmed to the max, the glow is visible in the dark, and that did sit well with my wife – kept her waking up in the night. I could cover this one or hide it in a closet, but it complicated things. I also didn’t like the speakers build in the tablets – the speech sounded unnatural. Therefore, I tested a different system (Setup #2 below).
Setup #2. Mostly for fun, and because I had the time, I looked of an alternate setup to test in my family room. For this Kinect, I replaced the TW700 with a Quantum Byte QS-1043-QB ($170). This is a mini-desktop with a small footprint and 32 GB of memory (embedded MultiMedia card). It’s fanless. It came with Windows 8.1 but I upgraded to Windows 10 with no problem (did it right away before adding any software). This little workhorse came with an HDMI and VGA port to connect a screen, 3 USB ports (one on the side and 2 on the back – all USB 2.0), an internet port (besides build in WiFi), and an audio port (3.5 mm jack). To set up all software, I hooked it up to my old Dell monitor and I used an old USB keyboard/mouse (with a USB dongle plugged into one of the rear USB ports) – although it has also a Bluetooth capability. Another USB port was used for the Kinect. I got some small speakers with a 3.5 mm plug and their independent powering (Logitech Speakers Z130, $19).
In this setup, I noticed that the Kinect initialization in debug mode showed an error that the USB doesn’t have enough bandwidth. The Kinect camera didn’t work but voice recognition did. In the Windows 10 system, the Kinect camera driver shows the typical exclamation mark next to it indicating that something is not working. After some searching on the web, it appears that the Quantum Byte has only 1 USB controller, and that is probably limiting. I investigated the USB controller-roothub-device tree with a free utility (USBview.exe). Switching devices to other USB ports didn’t help. So you can’t just plugin a lot of demanding USB devices even if there are 3 USB ports. However, my final setup was for unattended access using TeamViewer without the USB keyboard/mouse and without any monitor plugged in. And in this setup, the Kinect initializes just fine. I like the speakers and with the voice speed slowed down a bit in the HS3 speaker client, the speech is clear and natural. As with the tablets, I am always logged in into the Quantum Byte, and all sleep/hibernation/hybrid sleep settings are disabled. Power is always on.
There was however one other problem that I had to solve. In order for the remote access to work properly via TeamViewer, I needed to have a monitor connected. TeamViewer captures the screen and duplicates it on my host Mac or PC. Without a monitor connected, the screen flashes very fast constantly in TeamViewer, and key/mouse use isn't recognized while flashing. Well, that defeats the purpose of remoting to the Quantum Byte and trying to get rid of any screens like these on the tablets. But I found the solution: with a little $25 device that plugs into the HDMI port of the Quantum Byte, a virtual monitor is being simulated and remoting worked fine. This device is the “CompuLab 4K Display Emulator (fit-Headless 4K)”. Probably works also with the lower-resolution “CompuLab Display Emulator (fit-Headless)”, for only $15.
This is of course a more expensive setup. But this system is very stable and restarts automatically when the power goes off and comes back. The Quantum Byte mini desktop comes with a separate jumper that you need to install inside in order to enable autostart.
I was so happy with this system that I got a 2nd Quantum Byte for my Kinect in the bedroom. Since there is less space, I used a small iHome iBT60 wireless rechargeable speaker ($20). I have it connected to the Quantum Byte via the 3.5 mm jack (not using the wireless) and I have it continuously charged via the USB port also plugged into the Quantum Byte (no problems with USB resources).
I tried several bluetooth wireless speakers using the bluetooth connection, but starting any speech from HS3 is a bit delayed, and I was loosing the 1st syllable in any text-to-speech sentence. I think it's due to the bluetooth connection being established because this didn't happen with a hardwired speaker connection. There may be a way to delay the spoken sentence a bit to make it work but I opted to have everything hardwired. Works just fine that way.
If fast communications with the HS3 server (mine is a HomeTroller S6 Pro using Windows Embedded 7) are needed, you can have the Quantum Byte connected to your LAN via a LAN cable (instead of or in addition to WiFi). WiFi works fine for me (no noticeable delay for speech recognition or generation).
I hope that this is helpful for some. Let me know if anyone has questions.
Rene
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HS3 Pro 3.0.0.208 (Windows) on HomeTroller S6 Pro (Windows 7 Embedded), 32-bit, 4 GB
Hardware: Insteon Hub | Insteon 2441TH (5 thermostats) | Z-Net
Plugins: Insteon | Insteon Thermostat | HSTouch Server| Kinect | Z-Wave | Restart
Kinect & Speaker Client on Quantum Byte mini-desktop (both Windows 10)
HSTouch App/Client on iPhone (iOS) and WFTT07 (Android)