This one is just a minor fix for a problem in 2.0 where Coyote 2 devices would have intermittent output.
There are no other changes - it's not necessary to update from 2.0 if you are not using a Coyote 2.
This is a major update with a large number of changes. The APK is available from the usual Github page.
You can now use multiple estim devices at the same time. A new "Outputs" panel has been added to the UI to list and manage all of your output devices.
Many settings that used to be global are now set per-device, and have been moved to the new output settings dialog. This includes the frequency range, calibration settings and player special effects (which were renamed to "tweaks").
Bluetooth devices are now connected and disconnected by tapping the Bluetooth icon for your device in the output list. The colour of the icon shows connection status, turning green when your device is successfully connected.
When a funscript is being played, the player will display meters that show the current position of all axes. For example in a typical single axis funscript, a meter shows the current position of the "stroker". Multi-axis funscripts can display up to 6 different meters, including fancy rotational ones with a different design.
Howl's animated power meters now use the background of the power controls instead of dedicated bars, for a more streamlined design.
The pulse charts now have 4 different display modes, which the usual chart button toggles between.
The X axis always denotes time. Y position signifies amplitude generally, or frequency for the specific frequency charts in quad mode. Colour signifies the channel and gives a rough guide to the frequency (with darker hues being lower frequencies).
In the dual and quad formats, charts related to channel A are displayed on the left, and charts related to channel B on the right. This brings them in line with how most users intuitively expected them to work, since they now appear below their respective channel controls. Some basic labels have also been added to make the function of each chart clearer.
A new "Chart style" setting has been added, which controls whether to display the charts in point or line mode.
The settings page has been broken up into tabbed sections, making it much easier to navigate. Quick options have been added to reset certain sections to their default values. There is also a global settings reset (under "Misc") that resets everything except remote access options. The reason for this exception is simply to help users avoid the nuisance of having to type their API key into other apps like the Kodi add-on again.
Funscript algorithm settings have been moved from the player settings dialog into their own dedicated tab on the main settings page, reducing clutter.
This release makes some key changes deep in the bowels of the app to how Howl counts time. The main loop previously ran 10 times per second and would look into the future to calculate the correct output for devices, which could have any update rate. This was very flexible, but made some of the core logic quite convoluted. For example, because we calculated a batch of output pulses at a time, we had to do a bunch of extra work to "fake" smoothness for the charts and meters and make them look as if they were being produced one-by-one.
This version switches to having a main loop that runs 40 times per second, and only looks at the present. Pulses are batched at the output level instead, and all outputs are required to use some divisor of the app's rate (e.g. 40Hz, 20Hz, 10Hz). The advantages of this simplified system are:
Howl's core Bluetooth handling code has been completely rewritten to be more robust. This is intended to solve annoyances like the initial connection process sometimes randomly failing when using a Coyote 3 device with the latest firmware.
The way audio outputs work has been adjusted to bring them in line with the core timing changes, and for better separation between our output specific code and generic Android audio handling code. The pattern that the app is generating should now be followed more cleanly, with fewer steps being skipped or doubled.
An "Always full volume" setting has been added to all audio outputs (in the "Device" tab). This makes them completely ignore Howl's main power level, and is more convenient for users who would rather use controls on their hardware device.
An experimental new output method for stereostim devices. It's inspired by the way pulse based devices work, but uses bursts of multiple pulses rather than individual ones.
This idea is at an early stage, so a very wide range of settings is available in the "Device" tab for testing purposes. It should be possible to adjust the feel a great deal using the provided settings.
I need some stereostim users to experiment with this output method and give me some feedback on what the optimal settings are, and whether it's worth including it in future releases or not.
A persistent websocket variant of the remote API has been added, running on port 4696 (when remote access is enabled). Developers should refer to the remote API wiki page for further details.
Adds a streaming function, allowing developers to send patterns to Howl in real-time. Use this by first calling the start_stream API endpoint, which causes Howl to switch source to your stream. start_stream also offers various parameters such as update rate and buffer size which can be tuned for your use case. Once your stream is active, periodically call stream_pulse with pulse objects representing the pattern you want to play. The websocket API is recommended for this, since the REST API can only support low update rates due to the overhead of having to establish a new connection on every call to stream_pulse.
With this number of improvements, it is almost inevitable that there will also be some new bugs. If you notice any issues, please report them.
I had an idea for a different way to drive stereostim devices that was inspired by how pulse based devices like the Coyote work, and also draws on some concepts from wavelets. Instead of single pulses like some basic devices use, it fires bursts of multiple charge balanced square pulses. I've dubbed this the "multipulse" output technique.
I don't really know if this is a particularly good idea or not, or how best to tune the parameters (as I don't have a stereostim device myself). So I included all the options I thought might make a difference into a test build of Howl, so that you can adjust them in real-time and see what combination works best. A couple of the options are actually getting into original research territory and haven't been very well explored previously.
So it's over to you guinea pigs brave testers to let me know if it works well or not, and what settings you find the best!
This is definitely one for seasoned stereostim users, as we're trying something new that could well be badly tuned by default, or have implementation bugs.
This development build of Howl has a ton of changes I'm working on for the next release, including various UI updates and some fairly deep changes to the main loop and how things are timed. So there's a high chance that it might have some new bugs. If you notice any particular problems (even if they are nothing to do with the new output type), please let me know.
Thanks to Diglet (developer of Restim) who I bounced some ideas off, and for helpful safety advice on this kind of audio output.
You can set how many pulses Howl will fire in each burst at the lowest frequency (the 1Hz setting) and at the highest frequency (the 100Hz setting). Values in between are interpolated, so at 50Hz you'll get an amount of pulses halfway between the two.
I had a theory that it might feel nicer to use more pulses at low frequencies (as this makes the total energy more balanced across the range). But see what you think.
How long each individual pulse in the burst is. The value shown is for a single high or low section (so the entire balanced square pulse will be double the displayed length).
How long to wait between each pulse in the burst. I don't think this aspect has been explored much. Does it feel better to have a delay here, or to just set 0?
How long to wait between the high and low sections of a single pulse. Only very short delays can be offered here for safety reasons (due to the need to balance charge).
When this option is enabled, only one channel is allowed to fire a burst at a time. So the two channels should be unable to interfere with each other. The idea is based on something the Coyote 3 does, but as far as I'm aware nobody has tried it with stereostim, so I don't know if it's particularly helpful or not!
This option should work better with shorter bursts (less pulses, shorter pulses, shorter delays). Because it works by modifying the pulse timing, as if both channels want to fire at the same time, one is forced to wait. So the shorter our bursts are, the less the timing gets disrupted by enabling this setting.
The bottom of the output settings screen shows you estimated duty cycles at various different frequencies. The lines turn red if you have picked incompatible settings that will not fit, so less bursts would be fired than the desired frequency (this happens at less than 100% duty cycle due to the various delay parameters, and an enforced minimum delay between bursts).
2 August: I noticed that the new funscript meters have a couple of issues in this build. All the rotational ones (for multi-axis scripts) work the wrong way round. And the meters don't respect the configured remote latency adjustment, so move with the wrong timing (playback is correct, but the meters are wrong). It's not particularly relevant to trying the new output, but just thought I'd mention it in case anyone else runs into that. The meters will be fixed before the final release.
Just a small fix for a crash bug related to the debug log changes in v1.1. Thanks to Vpn33 for reporting it.
Howl now supports multi-axis funscripts. These scripts are usually created for robotic stroker toys, such as the OSR2 or SR6. In addition to up/down movements like a basic funscript, they can contain other motions such as rotation, side to side movement etc.
Scripts with up to 6 axes of motion are supported, specifically: stroke (L0), surge (L1), sway (L2), twist (R0), roll (R1) and pitch (R2).
Some additional changes, which also apply to "normal" single axis funscripts, make the algorithm more dynamic overall. These include considering the energy of strokes when deciding what frequencies to use (previously this was purely position based). And adding a directional frequency component, so that downward strokes have a subtly different feel to upward ones.
Howl only supports funscripts where all the axes are present in a single file. If you have scripts in the older format that provided a separate file for each axis (like "example.funscript", "example.pitch.funscript" and "example.roll.funscript"), you can combine them into a single file using the helpful "funscript_combiner.py" Python script that I've provided in the repository.
Well firstly we kind of have four output channels (since amplitude and frequency can pretty much be treated as independent variables for the type of estim use we're considering). And secondly Howl's funscript support has never worked simply by mapping one axis to another. It instead considers what the actual "feel" of a script played on a stroker device might be, and translates that into estim sensations.
The first step was coming up with a way to feed all of the motion axes that are present into our power algorithm. So that any movement on any axis produces a sensation that can be felt. Then to make things a bit more fun, I also added some special axis specific frequency effects. For example leaning forward in R2 has a different feel to leaning back (it's subtle, but it's there).
Of course you're still not going to get a complete 3D effect in a stereo system. But hopefully you'll find it's a fun time, and can feel noticably different to single axis scripts.
Three calibration activities provide new settings to optimise your device's output in various ways, along with appropriate test patterns.
This calibration is implemented in a device independent way, so features like frequency balance (which previously only the Coyote 3 had a hardware setting for) are now available to users of other devices.
Can balance the power on channel A and B so that you feel equal sensation on both when they are at the same numbered power setting. This is helpful when using different types of electrodes on each channel that would not normally be balanced.
Optimise how Howl's positional effect is calculated, to feel more even throughout each stroke (improving realism). Howl uses this effect when playing back funscripts, and in several built-in activities.
Allows the frequency balance on each channel to be adjusted, for example to make high and low frequencies feel equally powerful.
The eagle-eyed might notice added code for some other features such as a WebSocket API and streaming-like functionality. These are still under development for a future release, and are not yet in a usable state.