iChromatic Strobe Tuner now in the Mac App Store

I was surprised when I looked in the Mac App Store a few weeks ago, and didn't see any musical instrument tuner applications that were, in my opinion, both attractive and accurate.  So I created a new chromatic strobe tuner app just for the Mac.  The HotPaw iChromatic Strobe Tuner is now available from the Mac App Store for an introductory and fairly low price.

The visual concept is very similar that used in my popular inTuna Guitar Tuners and iChromatic HD Tuners available from the iOS App store.  However, I used the greater processing power available on the Mac to display more attractive circular pitch strobes (two of them), plus a note-on-keyboard indicator and a music grand staff display, as well as usual meter dials and frequency read-out.  It supports a configurable Concert A frequency and several settings to customize tuning intonation by cents.  Check it out, and feel free to send feedback (or bug reports if you find any).

HotPaw Morse Decoder, now available for the Mac

The HotPaw Morse Decoder app for the iPhone and iPad has turned out to be a surprisingly popular app worldwide, selling copies in almost 50 countries, and getting great reviews.  (Although it never hurts to have more! :)

The Morse Decoder has now been ported to Mac OS X.  Version 1.0 of the HotPaw CW Morse Decoder for the Mac is available from the Mac App Store.  The features are nearly identical to the iPad version of the app, including the narrow band audio filtering and high speed QRQ mode with can decode Morse Code at over 80 WPM in good conditions.

So, the interesting question will be: How many radio amateurs use recent Macs?

UnTouchType for iPad

Version 1.0.0 of UnTouchType is now available as a Free app from the U.S. iOS App Store.  Experiment with chorded one-hand touch text input.  The app can speak each letter on input for audible verification.  But the current version is very plain, and only allows one short line of text input.

I am awaiting a bit more user feedback before updating UnTouchType with a version that will allow the user to customize their preferred keying combinations by uploading a text file using iTunes.

UnTouchType

I usually don't announce apps in development until they are ready to ship, approved by Apple, and available in the App store. But I recently demonstrated an early version of an app, on stage, at the close of the iOSDevCamp 2011 weekend Hackathon. So I might as well write about the idea behind an app still very much under construction.

Since adding support for Apple's VoiceOver Accessibility to a few of my apps, I've received enough customer feedback to realize that that iPhones and iPads are more popular among blind (or otherwise vision impaired) users than I might otherwise have suspected. By user request, I even developed an app specifically for this market segment, the HotPaw Talking Tuner.

Now, to segue into a bit of computer history: On December 9, 1968, Douglas Englebart, in what has been called the "Mother of All Demos", demonstrated on stage several innovations including the computer mouse, hypertext linking, online collaboration, and some precursors to bitmapped graphical user interfaces. He also demonstrated something less well known, the chord keyboard. This was a one-handed keyboard that could be used to enter text by hitting a combination of buttons. Chord keyboards haven't become popular because it takes some time to learn the key combinations. But if a person needs to enter text with one hand, and takes the time to learn the chords, it is a fairly fast input method.

One current problem with iPad text entry is the lack of tactile feedback when tapping on keyboard icons and other GUI buttons. This makes it difficult to enter text "eyes-free", that is, without looking at the display. Apple's VoiceOver Accessibility technology provides one solution, by giving synthesized voice feedback about where the graphical keys are located. But it currently seems difficult to make VoiceOver work for chorded multitouch input positioning.

My prototype solution is to have an app dynamically place 5 keyboard buttons wherever a person places all five fingers on the display, then record actions, not by tapping on buttons, but by lifting fingers up off the multitouch display. These finger actions can be converted in a "chording" input method by using the combination of which fingers one picks up to select a character for input. Combinations of lifting touches and swiping gestures can be used expand the potential vocabulary. Since this method is actuated, not by touching, but by lifting fingers up, I am calling this input method:

UnTouchType

In a day or so of coding at the Hackathon, I got the an app working well enough to demonstrate to a few people; and they thought it was an interesting enough idea for me to demo. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me on stage at the conclusion of the iOSDevCamp Hackathon. (Playing with the app and accidentally turning on the mute switch just before my presentation slot didn't help. Live and learn.)

If the kernel of this idea is a new innovation, consider it to now be in the public domain. Some experimental works remains on how fast this input method is compared to other eyes-free input methods on touchpads, and which finger/chord/letter combinations might be faster and/or easier to learn. Stay tuned.

Dance Metronome/BPM

This month, HotPaw Productions introduced a new iOS app, Dance Metronome/BPM now available from Apple's iTunes App Store. This app has both a tap BPM (beats per minute) meter and a very accurate metronome. The BPM meter is designed for ballroom dancers, as it indicates whether a particular tempo is within strict tempo range. All the International Standard, Latin and American Style Smooth and Rhythm dance tempos are included. The metronome in the app can play beats, on time, to sub-millisecond accuracy. (Given an audio sample rate of 44100Hz, there are 44 samples per millisecond, and the Dance Metronome/BPM app calculates the nearest exact sample to start playing each on-time beat.)

June App Updates

The Morse Decoder app for iPhone and iPad has been upgraded to version 1.7. It now includes a new High Speed WPM mode switch to support decoding really fast QRQ WPM speeds from 40 to 80 WPM. Morse code just sounds like a blur at those rates. The HotPaw Basic app includes a "morse" command which supports sending Morse Code sounds up to 99 WPM.

The HotPaw Music Spectrograph update to version 1.1.2 will now allow you to analyze music from your iTunes Library. Hit the "Song" button, and it will let you select a tune to convert and visualize in spectrograph form. You can stop and replay sections of music to (re)hear what interesting looking segments of the spectrum graph sound like. I used it to help transcribe some complicated fast piano riffs. Currently does monophonic analysis only.

Sing-inTuna update version 2.1.3 includes a fix for a rare problem where someone reported the app needed to be force quit and restarted to get audio working again.

May App Updates and News

The HotPaw Sing-inTuna app has been updated to version 2.1.2, with improved audio processing and graphics performance. This should help reduce the random low frequency dots that occasionally appear in the voice pitch graph.

The MorseTest app has been updated to version 1.1.6, with support for a couple new Morse Code punctuation characters added. VoiceOver support should also be improved in this update.

Blind Talking Tuner has been update to version 1.0.1, with an easier to understand speech synthesizer voice.

Austin Seraphin wrote a nice blog post reviewing the HotPaw Morse2Text Morse code text entry app.