The documentation for the installation misses some caveats that comes with getting things installed and running on a Windows 10 home edition machine. After some tinkering this is the method that I’ve found to work for me.

Activate MindKit through the Mobile App

To setup the MindKit on our network, we have to go through the activation steps on the mobile app. I have only tested this on android.

The android version of MindKit is not available through the Play Store at the time of this writing, but the link to the APK is on the last page of the small pamphlet in the cerebrum box. We can find it at http://www.vincross.com/app/mindkit.

After downloading the application, just follow the steps provided to get the MindKit attached to the network. Despite not being able to find the app on the Play Store, the app itself seems to function well and getting it setup on wifi was no issue.

Install Docker-Toolbox

Docker Desktop is only available for Windows 10 Pro so we need to use Docker Toolbox to get MindCLI set up.

After installing Docker Toolbox, run Docker Quickstart Terminal. This will get a default Docker Machine set up.

Install Mind CLI

Download mind.exe

Add mind.exe to the windows path.

Run mind upgrade

The virtual machine will only have access to the C:\Users\ area of the Host machine. So mind init will only create files in child directories of C:\Users\.

After running mind upgrade we should be able to run mind scan to find the MindKit attached to your network.

Forward Inbound and Outbound ports on the host machine

Set up port forwarding rules through the Windows Firewall advanced settings. This will allow us to find our network attached MindKit.

Forward ports on the VM through VirtualBox Manager

At this point you should be able to find your MindKit robot through mind scan. Set it as default with mind set-default-robot.

At this point, everything will seem fine, but as we follow the tutorial and try to install our first test skill, we run into some more issues.

When running mind run, we run into a connection timed out error. This is because we need to forward port 8888 on the VM instance as well.

Run docker-machine stop to shutdown the VM before reconfiguring the port settings.

Pop open VirtualBox Manager and go to settings for the default machine.

In network there should already be an adapter that is attached to NAT. Click Advanced > Port Forwarding to add a new port forwarding configuration.

In the port configuration, we leave Host IP and Guest IP blank as it will be automatically set by VirtualBox.

After updating the settings, we run docker-machine start to boot up the VM again.

Once this happens, running mind run should install the skill without a connection error.