New Lectrosonics SM Remote App, "LectroRM"

[NewEndian]

Nothing about blocks 19 and 20 indicate that there are disabled channels. This week I will take a visit to prosound as they have given me permission to use their transmitters for testing. In the meantime, if you can duplicate the issue, I would appreciate some information: the channels that do not work, if there are channels in the same transmitter that do work, and if there are any conditions which change the remote's effectiveness.

Thank you,

James

[Lawrence Chick]

Thanks, Derek! I am happy to take into consideration any criticisms that people have. I do after all want this to be the definitive app for this purpose. Once I feel comfortable that it is at that point, I'll move on to my next app

Affirmative: block and frequency choice do not affect the tone. Only the hex code matters.

Presets for Android are not going anywhere.

I programmed in purposefully to set the volume to zero when the app appears on screen as a safety measure. I figured the volume slider was easy enough to use that people could flip it up when they start the app, and it plays a sample tone while sliding so you know how loud the control tone will be. I suppose I could put a preference in to give people the choice to keep it from reseting to mute.

James

HI James,

PM sent

Lawrence

[LarryF]

Hi Marc,

If the sleep functions worked from the app then the transmitter should have picked up the freq changes also. Tones is tones. Ambient noise shouldn't bother the dweedle tones either. We tested the dweedle tones in a bar with the tones at a low level and a foot between the lavaliere and the RM speaker. There is a leveling circuit that brings strong and weak signals to the same level in the DSP and some narrow filters that knock out most noise while passing the dweedle tone frequencies. If you were an inch from the mike, you should have been able to overcome any noise that didn't overload the lavaliere. Somehow I don't believe the studio was that loud. On the other hand, I don't have a clue as to what could be wrong. I'll ask DT here if he has any ideas.

Best Regards,

Larry Fisher

Lectrosonics

Just had a huge problem with the app.

Had a situation with 6 simultaneous wireless mikes, and had some intermod/interference issues that required that we change the frequencies after six actresses were miked up. We tried changing the freqs on three of them -- no go. Had to drag the girls off-set and do it manually. (The Senator and I must have had our hands on at least 20 different breasts this week, give or take.)

The displays on the SMa's read: Freq Err. I suspect that when we tried to use the app the app to change frequency, there was too much ambient noise in the studio for the transmitter to clearly get the code to switch to the right hex value.

Even getting right on top of the lav (1" away) and holding the iPhone speaker very close did no good. Kind of hard to yell "quiet on the set! I'm changing frequencies!" which is sad.

Interestingly, putting the transmitters to sleep or waking them back up worked every time.

--Marc W.

[LarryF]

Here's DT's thoughts on the dweedle tone:

LEF

marcw> The displays on the SMa's read: Freq Err.

Only our receivers put up a display like this. It's the "check

frequency" warning, meaning that rssi is strong but the window

detector is pegged to one side.

marcw> Even getting right on top of the lav (1" away) and holding

marcw> the iPhone speaker very close did no good.

Hmm... I do have a guess. The remote control signals are FSK and use

two frequencies, 2225 Hz and 2025 Hz. In order for the signals to

work reliably, it is necessary that the two tones arrive at the

microphone at roughly equal levels. Discrepancies of up to 10 dB can

be tolerated under perfect conditions, but perfect conditions are

rare. In practice, the two tones should leave the speaker at equal

volume if possible.

Our remote controls use a speaker with extremely peaky frequency

response, so we compensated for that in firmware. The iphone speaker

probably has very different characteristics. It may be necessary to

re-record or equalize the tones with a particular target speaker in

mind.

An interesting experiment might be to plug some headphones into the

iphone. If the app can direct the tones there, there is a chance that

some set of headphones will work better than the iphone speaker, at

least for those particular recordings.

marcw> Interestingly, putting the transmitters to sleep or waking

marcw> them back up worked every time.

I wonder if the SLEEP and UNSLEEP functions use different recordings,

created under different conditions, and those are better equalized for

the iphone speaker. A useful diagnostic might be to make a recording

of a few tone bursts from the iphone, some that work well and some

that don't, then look at the relative levels of the two tones in each

case.

I hope that helps!

-DT

[NewEndian]

Larry and DT,

Very interesting regarding the specs of the tones. When I recorded the tones to analyse originally, the two tones seemed to be at different levels, so I had the iPhone generate them as such. Also I used 2200 Hz and 2000 Hz for the two tones. I will change the app to reflect those specifications and test it of course to make sure it works. Perhaps that will make my generated tones more reliable.

All tones including SLEEP and UNSLEEP are generated by the app. But they are somewhat less complicated sequences. They may be inherently easier to decode by the transmitter.

Sincerely,

James

[studiomprd]

" But they are somewhat less complicated sequences. They may be inherently easier to decode by the transmitter. "

IIRC, the sequences were designed to increase reliability...

[NewEndian]

That is true. Still, as related to the remote, the choice of on/off is inherently less complex than the choice among 256 frequencies.

[Marc Wielage]

marcw> The displays on the SMa's read: Freq Err.

Only our receivers put up a display like this. It's the "check frequency" warning, meaning that rssi is strong but the window detector is pegged to one side.

No, this was definitely an error message on the SMa LCD readout. Senator Michaels verified this with me. The receiver (a Venue) just showed those channels as dead, no error message per se.

I had to reset the transmitters by removing the battery before I could manually reset the frequency. One I did that, it was fine. Again, I tested the app before I used it, going through the SMa's with the iPhone app in a very quiet room, and it was fine. This was in a studio with a lot of ambient noise, at least a dozen women talking at once, lots of crew chatter, etc. And again, lock, unlock, sleep, and unsleep modes all worked fine. Didn't try input volume, except to verify in tests that it worked.

--Marc W.

[LarryF]

OK. I'm confused but will find out.

Best,

Larry F

Lectro

No, this was definitely an error message on the SMa LCD readout. Senator Michaels verified this with me. The receiver (a Venue) just showed those channels as dead, no error message per se.

I had to reset the transmitters by removing the battery before I could manually reset the frequency. One I did that, it was fine. Again, I tested the app before I used it, going through the SMa's with the iPhone app in a very quiet room, and it was fine. This was in a studio with a lot of ambient noise, at least a dozen women talking at once, lots of crew chatter, etc. And again, lock, unlock, sleep, and unsleep modes all worked fine. Didn't try input volume, except to verify in tests that it worked.

--Marc W.

[LarryF]

Dave Thomas (DT) is going to sign up at JWS and will get into the discussion directly rather than me walking down the hall and passing questions back and forth. Not the exercise isn't all good but the interface will be a little more direct.

Best,

Larry F

Lectro

OK. I'm confused but will find out.

Best,

Larry F

Lectro

[David Thomas]

It's always fun when Larry comes by my office, but I've signed up to save his sneakers (save his sole?).

About that SMa error message... I have the firmware source code in front of me, and here are all the message that can appear in response to a tone signal.

Rc oFF ("yes, yes, I know you sent me a tone, but I'm configured to ignore them... nothing personal")

------ (six minus signs "a valid tone was received, but I can't act on it, e.g. UNSLEEP when already awake)

Loc / unLoc

switch to audio screen

switch to frequency screen (hex or mhz reading)

What seems strange to me about this report is that each tone has a checksum, making it statistically improbable for a signal to be received as a different valid signal. By far the most likely failure mode is that the tone appears to be invalid, in which case the transmitter is supposed to ignore it completely. Of course, all of the above is what the programmer intended. The actual behavior might be something else entirely!

Either way, my guess is that the iphone speaker is actually better than the RM speaker, and that once the tones come out properly equalized, the iphone app should work comparably to the RM.

One other thought for app developers... a fix was made to the RM, embodied in version 1.2 of its firmware, which added stop bits to increase reliability. The official protocol, then, as of this version, is 8N2 (8 bits, no parity, 2 stop bits). This change was made back in 2009, so in all likelihood, all RM imitators are already observing the correct timings, but I thought I'd mention it just in case.

Smiles from the Balloon Capital of the World...

-DT

[NewEndian]

The dsp for the app tones has been retooled to reflect these specifications and/or act more closely like the rm. Also the dsp has been changed to remove some of the artifacts caused by tone generation. These updates will be available in a few days for iphone and tonight for android.

-james

[NewEndian]

Update Android: app with updated specifications and new tone generation algorithm is available now on the Android Market. (For those interested, play a tone before updating and listen for little clicks. After update the tone should be smoother)

iPhone: the update is pending app review (4-6 days). Also if you have iOS version 4.0 or 4.1, this update will fix the problem with crashing on startup.

[James Arnold]

The extremely busty young woman who was mic'd was pleased that I didn't have to manhandle her to get to the transmitter.

There's always a downside to every new technology...

[NewEndian]

I stand waaaaaaay freakin' corrected! The update for iPhone is on its way to the app store. Enjoy!

iPhone update: app with updated specifications and new tone generation algorithm is available now in the iTunes app store. (For those interested, play a tone before updating and listen for little clicks. After update the tone should be smoother)

[Marc Wielage]

Thanks for the fast work, James! I'll try it on my upcoming shoot next week and see how it goes.

What I really should do is try to get it to malfunction before I update the app. Then I could at least shoot a picture of the SMa screen to prove that the Senator and I aren't crazy. (OK, that would be a hopeless task, but we did really see the error message on at least two different units.)

--Marc W.

[NewEndian]

I'd appreciate that, Marc. I tried all sorts of things yesterday to get it to not work, but you might be able to better replicate the conditions.

Sincerely,

James

[LarryF]

A picture of the error message as described wins you a T-shirt of your choice and teaches us something.

Thanks,

LEF

Thanks for the fast work, James! I'll try it on my upcoming shoot next week and see how it goes.

What I really should do is try to get it to malfunction before I update the app. Then I could at least shoot a picture of the SMa screen to prove that the Senator and I aren't crazy. (OK, that would be a hopeless task, but we did really see the error message on at least two different units.)

--Marc W.

[Lawrence Chick]

I will double boot my htc in android when I need to use the app.

Thanks

Hi Rado,

Wondering if you (or others) have tried it with the HTC, coz I kinda find HTC's speaker output (generally) much softer than most phones, like Nokia, Samsung, ...etc.

Best Regards,

Lawrence

[jason porter]

Works great with my HTC Desire

Hi Rado,

Wondering if you (or others) have tried it with the HTC, coz I kinda find HTC's speaker output (generally) much softer than most phones, like Nokia, Samsung, ...etc.

Best Regards,

Lawrence

[Lawrence Chick]

Works great with my HTC Desire

Thanks Jason,

Just a quick check with HTC users, if there's any difference using the app in a noisy enviroment compared to a quiet enviroment to adjust to mics. Say with the mics buried in the same place? Jason, did you managed to change your settings is various enviroment conditions (as in quiet and noisy)? Thanks again.

Best Regards,

Lawrence

[jason porter]

I haven't done any testing yet in loud environments.

[Marc Wielage]

I have to find five or six loud, shrill women, then try change the frequencies while they talk nearby! That may take some time.

The other weird thing was, not only did the SMa readout say FREQ ERR (or something close to that), I'm pretty sure the transmitter was locked up and would not respond to button pushes. This may have been because it got into a LOC mode, but because we were in a rush/panic situation, there wasn't a lot of time to diagnose it.

--Marc W.

[Lawrence Chick]

I haven't done any testing yet in loud environments.

Thanks Jason, Let me know if any HTC users find it easy to use the app in these situations more specifically like in a busy traffic street/area with cars honking...etc, or in a midst of a crowd (or lots of talking production crew nearby or preferably next to the talent)....

Thanks.

Best Regards,

Lawrence

[NewEndian]

iOS Opinion (Important, I need a lot of responses on this one): How would people feel about me completely flipping the interface around (Upside Down Orientation)? The reasoning being that the speaker is on the bottom of the device. I could of course make the app flip in response to the way the device is held, but i never really liked the screen flipping by surprise.