Android apps by GeorgieLabs

SoundWire (free version)

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 08:03:40 +0000

SoundWire lets you send any music or audio ("what you hear now") from your Windows or Linux PC to your Android mobile devices or other PCs. Use it as:
- A wireless extension of your PC-based music system
- A remote headphone amp (wireless headphones)
- A way to listen to music and movies from your computer anywhere in your house or out on your deck.

This is not just another file streaming app... you can use any music player on your PC or laptop like Grooveshark, Spotify, YouTube, or iTunes and feed the live sound directly to your Android device. SoundWire lets you listen to the free versions of Grooveshark and Spotify on your phone.

SoundWire has low latency (audio delay), which means it can even be used to listen to the soundtrack of a movie or YouTube video while you watch (**Note you must adjust the buffer size in app settings for low latency). There are other uses too... SoundWire can work as a baby monitor or listening device with a computer such as a netbook that has a built-in microphone. Hook up turntables to your computer's line input and stream a live DJ set to another part of the house over WiFi, or anywhere else over 3G/4G.

Features
- Live audio capture and streaming
- Not locked to one music player
- Excellent sound quality (44.1 / 48 kHz stereo 16-bit, PCM or Opus compression)
- True low latency (unlike AirPlay, Airfoil)
- Easy to use
- Compression option greatly reduces network usage
- x86 and MIPS support, stream music from PC to PC running virtualized app (Linux/Windows)
- Record SoundWire audio to a file (MP3 or WAV)

Before using SoundWire on your Android device you must install and run the SoundWire Server application on the Windows/Linux PC or laptop which is your source of music, web audio streaming, or other sounds. Download the server at http://georgielabs.net

For more information see the getting started guide at http://georgielabs.net/SoundWireHelp.html

These links are also available in the app. If you have any problems please see the troubleshooting tips at the above link. For example if you get choppy audio try restarting your wireless router, then try the other troubleshooting suggestions in the guide.

The free version of the application identifies itself by voice every 45 minutes and displays ads. There is a 10 minute compression trial in the free version. The full version enables unlimited Opus audio compression, can handle multiple clients (up to 10 connections), and has no ads or voice identification. It also has a special Pro Mode to set and display buffer latency precisely in milliseconds. Please consider purchasing the full version of SoundWire if you'd like to support the developer.

You may want to use a remote control app together with SoundWire. Some good choices include: Grooveshark Remote, Spotimote, Remote for iTunes, Android VNC, Unified Remote.

Please rate the app and submit comments on Google Play to let us know what you think of SoundWire. If you have a question or bug report send email to soundwire@georgielabs.net. If reporting a problem please give your phone's Android version (e.g. 2.3) and make/model. Check the server download page georgielabs.99k.org occasionally for updates.

Permissions
- Network communication: Communicates with the server program on your PC.
- Phone calls: Mutes audio when you receive or make a call. Without this permission music would continue to play, interfering with your call.
- Prevent phone from sleeping: Keeps app running while connected (playing music) or attempting to connect. May be disabled in settings.

Recent changes:
1.8.4 2013-05-08
-Updated integration support for Music VU Meter Widgets, required to send stereo meter data to latest version of Music VU
-Reduced CPU usage for most ARM devices.
-Incorporated Google fix for application not responding issue
-Minor bug fixes

Music VU Meter Widgets

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 11:21:08 +0000

Music VU gives you beautiful, dynamic level and spectrum meters for your music, right on your home screen. Works with any music player on your phone or tablet. You can choose from a variety of meters and place them anywhere on your home screen. Mix them up, or use more than one side-by-side for greater impact. To find the Music VU meter and spectrum widgets go into your apps list “Widgets” section and look for widgets named “Music VU”. On older Android versions long-press an empty part of your home screen.

All segmented meters feature classic digital styling and a high-resolution first meter segment. In addition, specialty spectrum analyzer and waveform meters give you unique new ways to visualize your music. Premium spectrum and waveform meters are free for a 7 day trial period (other meters are always free). Music VU shows accurate stereo levels when used with supported music players like the SoundWire audio streaming app. If your screen wallpaper makes it hard to see the meters you may want to turn off the "Transparent Background" option in settings.

Note: This is an advanced widget app which uses special techniques to update quickly. Due to limitations in the way Android widgets work you should have a relatively fast phone or tablet to get the full benefit of Music VU’s dynamic updating meters. A dual-core CPU is recommended. You may still notice occasional irregular or slow updates. To minimize CPU and battery usage Music VU is not active unless your screen is on and music is playing.

In rare cases if you can't find the meter widgets right after installing you should restart your launcher (home) app or restart your phone. If you have trouble please send email to the support address at the end of this description. We will attempt to resolve your problem.

On older Android versions 2.1 and 2.2 (Éclair, Froyo) Music VU will not work with certain music players that use the AudioTrack audio framework (Android limitation). This includes the Poweramp player. Other players like Winamp and DoubleTwist will work, or you may consider upgrading your phone to Android 2.3 or later to use any music player.

For more information including MusicVU preference settings please see the Music VU help page: http://georgielabs.net/MusicVUHelp.html

Available Meters (avoid using more than 5 or 6 meters at the same time)

Vertical 1 x 2: A classic vertical double-height level meter with 18 segments and three discrete colors. Large and very easy to read.

Circular Sweep 1 x 1: A beautiful and unique circular concentric level meter with 51 segments and colors which sweep continuously from green through amber to red. The outer ring is the left channel and the inner ring is the right channel when stereo data is available.

Circular 1 x 1: A circular concentric level meter with 12 segments and three discrete colors.

Vertical Sweep 1 x 1: A compact vertical level meter with 30 segments and colors which sweep continuously from green through amber to red.

Vertical Spectrum 2 x 1: A segmented spectrum analyzer with 7, 10, or 20 channels (configurable). Shows the realtime frequency content of your music.

Spectrum Graph 2 x 1: A colored spectrogram display similar to those in professional audio applications. Shows the detailed frequency content of your music over time.

Circular Wave 1 x 1: Shows your music as pulsating circular audio waveforms with dynamically changing colors representing VU levels.

Music VU Integration Info for Developers
If you’re an Android music app developer and would like to have your app send stereo meter data to Music VU only a few lines of code are needed. Please email GeorgieLabs at the address below to receive implementation details.

User Feedback
Please rate the app and submit comments on Google Play to let us know what you think of Music VU. If you have a question or bug report send email to musicvu@georgielabs.net . If reporting a problem please include your phone model and Android version.

Recent changes:
New spectrum and waveform meters:
**Segmented spectrum analyzer with 7, 10, or 20 bands
**Spectrogram display
**Circular waveform meter
(These are premium meters, free for 7 day trial period.)
-Changed "Apply Volume" settings option to be on by default.
-Improved SoundWire VU data communication
-Performance optimizations and graphics tweaks.

SoundWire (full version)

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 08:03:41 +0000

SoundWire lets you send any music or audio ("what you hear now") from your Windows or Linux PC to your Android mobile devices, or other PCs. Use it as:
- A wireless extension of your PC-based music system for parties
- A remote headphone amp (wireless headphones)
- A way to listen to music and movies from your computer anywhere in your house or out on your deck.

The full version of SoundWire enables unlimited Opus audio compression, can handle up to 10 connections at the same time, and has no ads or interruptions. It also has a special Pro Mode to set and display buffer latency precisely in milliseconds. You can use any music player on your PC or laptop like Grooveshark, Spotify, YouTube, or iTunes and feed the live sound directly to your Android device. SoundWire lets you listen to the free versions of Grooveshark and Spotify on your phone.

SoundWire has low latency (audio delay), which means it can even be used to listen to the soundtrack of a movie or YouTube video while you watch (**Note you must adjust the buffer size in app settings for low latency). There are other uses too... SoundWire can work as a baby monitor or listening device with a computer such as a netbook that has a built-in microphone. Hook up turntables to your computer's line input and stream a live DJ set to another part of the house over WiFi, or anywhere else over 3G/4G.

Features
- Live audio capture and streaming to multiple clients
- Not locked to one music player
- Excellent sound quality (44.1 / 48 kHz stereo 16-bit, PCM or Opus compression)
- True low latency (unlike AirPlay, Airfoil)
- Easy to use
- Compression option greatly reduces network usage
- x86 and MIPS support, stream music from PC to PC running virtualized app (Linux/Windows)
- Record SoundWire audio to a file (MP3 or WAV)

Before using SoundWire on your Android device you must install and run the SoundWire Server application on the Windows/Linux PC or laptop which is your source of music, web audio streaming, or other sounds. Download the server at http://georgielabs.net

For more information see the getting started guide at http://georgielabs.net/SoundWireHelp.html

These links are also available in the app. If you have any problems please see the troubleshooting tips at the above link. For example if you get choppy audio try restarting your wireless router, then try the other troubleshooting suggestions in the guide. If you get a message saying the app is not licensed and this message is incorrect then please check your internet connection and try again.

Please rate the app and submit comments on Google Play to let us know what you think of SoundWire. If you have a question or bug report send email to soundwire@georgielabs.cjb.net. If reporting a problem please give your phone's Android version (e.g. 2.3) and make/model. Check the server download page georgielabs.99k.org occasionally for updates.

Permissions
- Network communication: Communicates with the server program on your PC.
- Phone calls: Mutes audio when you receive or make a call. Without this permission music would continue to play, interfering with your call.
- Prevent phone from sleeping: Keeps app running while connected (playing music) or attempting to connect. May be disabled in settings.

Recent changes:
1.8.4 2013-05-08
-Updated integration support for Music VU Meter Widgets, required to send stereo meter data to latest version of Music VU
-Incorporated Google fix for application not responding issue
-Fixed startup crash in full version when not logged in to any Google account
-Minor bug fixes
1.8.1 2013-04-07
-Reduced CPU usage when compression is on for most ARM devices.

RealPi Benchmark

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 07:04:11 +0000

RealPi provides some of the best and most interesting Pi calculation algorithms out there. This app is a benchmark which tests your Android device's CPU and memory performance. It calculates the value of Pi to many decimal places. There are no hard limits on the number of digits, if you experience a freeze please see "Warnings" below. On multi-core processors RealPi tests the performance of a single core.

You can search for patterns in the resulting digits to find your birthday in Pi or find famous digit sequences like the "Feynman Point" (six 9's in a row at the 762nd digit position).

Leave comments with your Pi calculation time on the AGM+FFT formula for 1 million digits. Also the most digits you can calculate, which tests your phone's memory. My fairly fast Huawei Ascend P1 takes 25 sec for 1 million and can do at most 33 million digits. Note that the AGM+FFT algorithm works in powers of 2, so calculating 10 million digits takes just as much time and memory as 16 million digits (the internal precision is shown in the output). For accurate benchmark timing ensure that no other applications are running.

You can also run RealPi Benchmark on a Windows or Linux PC using virtualization, see http://georgielabs.cjb.net/RealPi-x86.html

Here's a summary of the available algorithms:
-AGM + FFT formula (Arithmetic Geometric Mean): This is one of the fastest available methods to calculate Pi, and is the default formula used by RealPi when you press "Start". It runs as native C++ code and is based on Takuya Ooura's pi_fftc6 program. For many millions of digits it can require a lot of memory, which often becomes the limiting factor in how many digits you can calculate.

-Machin's formula: This formula was discovered by John Machin in 1706. It's not nearly as fast as AGM + FFT, but shows you all the digits of Pi accumulating in real time as the calculation proceeds. Choose this formula in the settings menu and then press "Start". It's written in Java using the BigDecimal class. You should probably not ask it to compute much more than 10000 digits.

-Nth digit of Pi formula by Gourdon: This formula shows that it's possible, surprisingly, to calculate decimal digits of Pi "in the middle" without calculating the preceding digits. When you press the "Nth Digit" button RealPi determines 9 digits of Pi ending with the digit position you specify. It runs as native C++ code and is based on Xavier Gourdon's pidec program. Although it's faster than Machin's formula it can't beat the AGM + FFT formula in speed, however it takes almost no memory.

-Nth digit of Pi formula by Bellard: Gourdon's algorithm for the Nth digit of Pi can't be used for the first 50 digits, so this formula by Fabrice Bellard is used instead when the requested digit position is small.

Search function:
Use this to find patterns in Pi like your birthday. For best results calculate at least one million digits using the AGM + FFT formula, then select the "Search for Patterns" menu option.

Permissions:
If you enable the "Calculate when in sleep" option RealPi will keep calculating while your screen is off, useful when calculating many digits of Pi. While not calculating or after the calculation finishes your device will go into deep sleep as usual.

Warnings:
This app can drain your battery quickly while calculating, especially if the "Calculate when in sleep" option is on. You might want to connect your charger.

Calculation speed depends on your device's CPU speed, memory, and whether it has hardware floating point support. At very large numbers of digits RealPi may terminate unexpectedly or not produce an answer. It could also take a very long time to run (years). This is due to the large amount of memory and CPU time needed. The upper limit on the number of digits you can calculate depends on your mobile device.

Changes to the "Calculate when in sleep" option take effect for the next Pi calculation, not in the middle of a calculation, so set it before you start.

Recent changes:
Pi music may be coming one day in a future version of this app! Pi fanatics check out this song composed by Michael Blake based on Tau (2Pi) www.youtube.com/watch?v=3174T-3-59Q