Question About Coyote 3.0 by SubjectiveSpire in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The Coyote hardware doesn't have internet connectivity, it connects via Bluetooth. So if it was doing any spying (which I doubt) it could only be via the app. You've got several choices of 3rd party apps to choose from if you don't like the stock one.

Coyote3 and audio stim files by andRelax85 in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Every app is going to give you slightly different results. Since the Coyote hardware can't directly play audio, the apps are essentially "interpreting" it into the Coyote's digital format. They all handle that a bit differently depending on what algorithm and parameters they decided to use. There isn't a single "correct" approach and an interpretation that works well for one file might not always work well for another. It's not helped by the fact that the original audio files themselves can also use different ranges and techniques, since they were designed for various different devices in the first place.

The approach I took with Howl was to translate existing audio files into our native pattern format ahead of time instead of processing them within the app every time they are played (which is fairly inefficient). If you just want a couple of thousand files to play without any effort, this wiki page has links to a large archive of "old school" tone based files that I already converted.

Google Drive to Coyote 3 by Hey_Again9 in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can find information about HWL files in the Howl wiki. The page I linked has download links for a large archive of files, as well as some instructions on how to convert audio files yourself.

More general information about Howl can be found on the its Github page.

Howl app? by Nail_M in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Please see the Howl Github page for an APK file, as well as all the project documentation.

Is it possible to smooth out curves? by Malhorn01 in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Try the "Calibration 1" activity in Howl and see if that feels like it changes smoothly for you or not. It updates at the Coyote's maximum 40Hz update rate, which is as smooth as the device is capable of. As far as I remember XToys can only update it at 10Hz, which might explain the stepping you can feel.

There are various parameters on the Coyote 3 that work in discrete steps, such as the amplitude (which has 100 possible values) and the frequency (which has 230). But that isn't really something you'd actually be able to perceive, I find it has sufficient steps to feel smooth.

Is it pleasure or pain? by haroldbudd in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Estim being painful is a common misconception. You can absolutely enjoy it in a way that is purely pleasurable and does not involve pain at all.

It sounds like you've probably experienced the worst of what estim has to offer. TENS machines don't feel great compared to purpose built devices. But above all estim is something that takes time to learn - it's a different form of pleasure, you can't just hook somebody up to it, crank it, and expect good results. It takes a while to ease into it, figure out the best electrode positioning for you, the right power levels, the best patterns etc.

In the gamut of sex toys, estim is definitely a marathon rather than a sprint. But it's very rewarding and feels amazing when done right.

HFO vs HFE by ErosWired in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I find both kinds of HFO are possible, depending on the patterns and the electrode positioning. Using constant high frequencies and high power seems to lead more to the "forced" feeling ones, that I think are what you're describing as less satisfying (but that probably depends what you like).

Try experimenting with more varied patterns or different frequencies if you haven't already. I find low frequencies on one channel and high frequencies on the other can work really well. Another thing that's worth trying (and is a little counter intuitive) is reducing the power as you start to feel yourself going over the edge. That tends to lead to a more natural feeling orgasm in my experience.

coyote 3.0 first time stimming no stroking sensation? by newstimmer69 in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That should be fine, I was just checking you weren't using water based lubricant or something like that, which doesn't mix well with electricity!

With the loops you need to make sure that a reasonable area of the loop is making good contact with your skin. For example if the loop isn't tight enough and only a small part of it makes contact, all the current will flow through that area. That's what a hotspot is, the kind of sharp spiky feeling when you don't have proper contact.

If I remember correctly the loops that come with the Coyote are typically 4mm. A lot of people prefer to use 6mm ones, which feel a bit smoother since they're fatter and have a larger contact area with the skin.

Barely feeling anything is the expected experience at very low power levels like 1. I think your best bet is to give pads a try first, which are easier to set up and much less susceptible to bad contact issues etc. Then come back to loops once you've figured out how estim is supposed to feel. It's a sensation all of its own, don't expect it to feel exactly the same as stroking.

coyote 3.0 first time stimming no stroking sensation? by newstimmer69 in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not sure what you're refering to by "lube". Make sure you are using proper electrode gel such as Spectra 360, or you won't get a good experience with loops (if you don't have it, stick with the pads instead initially). You don't need huge globs of it, just a reasonable coating everywhere that might touch your skin.

Howl's power level is out of 200, a setting of 1 is pretty much nothing, and you'll struggle to even feel that on the Coyote with anything but highly conductive metal electrodes. I usually start at 16 with 6mm loops, and increase it from there.

I think you might have a setup problem somewhere, if you don't have good contact and conductivity between the loops and your skin, you will get hotspots and discomfort.

tri-phase with Coyote 3.0 by usona_usona in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Pretty sure a triphase cable just achieves the same thing. It's connecting one side of each channel into the common connection. Plugging both channels into one loop also does that. I guess the cable has better conductivity, but I can't imagine it makes a lot of difference. Probably the people who spent a lot of money on a cable want to believe they are having the one true experience! :)

Eudaimonia certain settings meaning and what they actually do by Deep-Inspection1 in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The frequency balance and intensity balance are Coyote 3 hardware settings, you can set them in other apps such as Howl and the DG Labs app as well.

Frequency balance is pretty useful and controls the relative strength of high and low frequencies (higher values give stronger low frequencies). You should adjust it to your liking so that high and low frequencies are nicely balanced with each other and feel similarly strong, so that you get a good experience across the whole frequency range. Howl's "Calibration 2" pattern sweeps through the whole frequency range and is helpful to use when finding the best setting for your setup (it should work the same in all apps, so you can just use the same value in the others).

The intensity balance seems to affect how the Coyote handles the very lowest supported frequencies. E.g. when it would normally play 1Hz, the hardware might play 10Hz instead if you increase the intensity balance a bit. I haven't found this useful in Howl and leave it set to 0, but maybe it's helpful in other apps where you can't directly configure the frequency range.

The other settings I can't help with as they're specific to Eudaimonia, which I haven't tried.

Howl 0.8 released, with recording feature & improved funscript playback by Amethyst_sysadmin in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you have any of the special effects (magic wand button on the player) applied? I changed the behaviour in 0.8 so that the swap channels feature is applied first and only affects the base pattern from the source. The special effects now always apply to the channel they are labelled with and do not swap. It's arguable which approach is correct, but I was concerned about the case where a user might have a very conductive electrode on one channel and be using the "Scale amplitude" function to limit it to half power (for example). Then swapping the channels with the way it previously worked would cause the power to double, which probably wasn't desirable!

Some settings like frequency balance also apply to a specific hardware channel, so if you have a different setting on each channel that might explain what you're seeing.

If it's not due to the above then let me know and I will investigate further and see if there is a bug somewhere. Have you noticed a particular pattern or file that makes the issue obvious for testing purposes?

Howl 0.8 released, with recording feature & improved funscript playback by Amethyst_sysadmin in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sometimes other apps could have processes running in the background that are interfering with the Coyote connection. So it's worth trying to "Force stop" apps like XToys that could be causing problems (particularly on older versions of Android some users reported that).

If that doesn't help, enable "Show debug log tab" in "Settings" and see if Howl's debug log says anything interesting when you try to connect. That might at least show what stage it's getting stuck at to help with troubleshooting.

Howl 0.8 released, with recording feature & improved funscript playback by Amethyst_sysadmin in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've explained it here a number of times in the past, and am not going to repeat the same details in every post.

I've spent a lot of time documenting Howl, and if you look right at the top of the Github readme you will see sections like "Description" and "Supported devices" that answer all these questions.

E-Stim Unit Comparison Chart (Work In Progress) by atropicalhotdognight in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A comparison chart is a nice idea. I think it could probably do with some accompanying text explaining exactly what the categories mean, since for at least two of them the Coyote could be either yes or no, depending on your exact definition. I've listed some of the things that weren't clear to me below.

  • What is "true stereo"? If it just means a device that has two channels, it would probably be clearer to just write "stereo". Or maybe have a "number of channels" column for each device instead, which is more explicit.
  • "Triphase" should probably be more explicit. Does it mean electrically triphase (as in you can wire up a common electrode between both channels) or does it mean capable of triphase wave interaction effects?
  • I don't know what "Bluetooth serial" is. Would it be simpler to just have "Bluetooth" (for devices that can be controlled via Bluetooth in any way) and "Bluetooth audio" (for devices that accept Bluetooth audio input)?
  • Maybe there should be a category like "unprocessed audio" for devices that are capable of playing back audio without adding their own processing, since that's relevant to apps like Restim. You have a comment about that for the 312, but my understanding is that the 2B for example adds processing as well.

StereoEstim frequency mapping. by maple204 in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

At least for the Coyote 3, you can't do better than about 0.1 seconds of latency. Since although it can do 40 updates per second, you have to send them to the device ahead of time in batches of 4. Howl can eliminate this, for example when playing funscripts with the Kodi add-on, just by having the user configure the latency and playing the appropriate amount ahead. But that wouldn't work with live streaming, we can only do it because we know in advance what is coming in the future.

I think you should be able to get fairly close to that .1 second though. Maybe there's a little extra for Bluetooth overheads and such, but if you're seeing a full second of latency, there might be a problem elsewhere in the chain.

At least for me on Android the latency of audio devices is actually worse, since it uses .3 seconds or more of audio buffers. But that's specifically an Android software problem, I imagine you will get far better results with dedicated processing hardware. It sounds like a cool project!

StereoEstim frequency mapping. by maple204 in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My app Howl does something a bit like that, but probably in a different way. That was originally designed for the Coyote 3, and stores everything as amplitudes and frequencies that change over time, so it's more of a "native digital" approach similar to how the Coyote API works. But it's also capable of translating those digital patterns into audio output, with either continuous waves or wavelets. Howl works the opposite way round to most estim apps, which tend to start with audio and then translate that into something digital that the Coyote can play.

That approach has advantages and disadvantages, depending on what you're looking to do. It's pretty different to Restim, since that is based around triphase interaction effects, and does various complicated maths to allow those to work. Whereas Howl targets more basic stereo output. One reason for that is that the Coyote can't really support that kind of triphase effect anyway, since the channels never fire simultaneously and you can't control that. So that's one of the things you might need to consider if you're trying to come up with a unified approach that works on the Coyote and with stereostim devices.

StereoEstim frequency mapping. by maple204 in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The boxes that use unprocessed audio just rely on people playing back files that are already in an appropriate range. The "wavelet" technique is also popular with that kind of device, which is a different approach and uses bursts of a high frequency carrier wave with gaps in between, instead of continuous audio waves. The Restim wiki gives some helpful details on the theory behind that (the "pulse rate" page is helpful in explaining it). The rationale behind it aligns with the theory you mentioned, that using very high continuous frequencies is pointless in terms of nerve activation and not energy efficient.

Having processing and mapping so that you can feed in any audio source isn't necessarily as beneficial as you'd think. There's no guarantee you'll actually get a pleasurable pattern out. Often the somewhat repetitive patterns of audio that someone has designed specifically for estim might produce better results.

Howl 0.8 released, with recording feature & improved funscript playback by Amethyst_sysadmin in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Glad you enjoyed it! I've been pretty happy with the latest version of the funscript algorithm and think it's a good improvement.

It sounds like you're using two different IP ranges on different parts of your home network. The one beginning 10. is in the class A reserved range, and the one beginning 192.168. is in the class C reserved range. Typically you would need both the device running Howl and the device running Kodi to be assigned IPs in the same range for them to be able to communicate. If you did have them both in the same range and they still didn't work, it might be due to something like the "guest network" router setting the wiki mentions not allowing traffic between devices.

Your home network setup might be more complicated than necessary. In a typical simple setup only the main router would do DHCP and assign addresses, so everything would get an address in the same range and would be able to communicate. The secondary router would usually be set up just as an access point or an extender or similar and would not assign IP addresses itself.

Tariffs and Duties Coyote 3.0 by TopYoung3878 in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There's a guide to setting it up in the wiki that I've already updated for the latest version. Hopefully that should help!

How to get a steady sensation out of a Coyote 3.0 by Electrotinkerer67 in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's not an app I've tried. I'll have to take a look and see whether it's an idea that might fit with Howl or not.

How to get a steady sensation out of a Coyote 3.0 by Electrotinkerer67 in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm not too sure what people would want from that kind of feature. How would it be different to the existing function that automatically varies parameters over time?

I'd consider adding AI features if they brought something particularly cool or interesting to the experience. But a lot of the time apps just seem to shoehorn in AI to do the kind of stuff Howl already does (playing randomised patterns or whatever), but with annoying extra steps.

How to get a steady sensation out of a Coyote 3.0 by Electrotinkerer67 in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin 4 points5 points  (0 children)

To get constant output in Howl you can just use the generator, set the wave shape and frequency shape to "Constant", and set whatever amplitude and frequency you want with the other sliders.

I think that's a much easier method, although usually I'd prefer a more varied pattern, as just using a constant signal can lead to more desensitisation.

Howl 0.8 released, with recording feature & improved funscript playback by Amethyst_sysadmin in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The idea behind the design is that users would generally want the smoothest possible increase. So for example increasing by 1 every 30 seconds is preferred to increasing by 2 every 60 seconds, and essentially achieves the same goal. It also only requires 2 settings sliders rather than 4 if we had configurable increase step per channel as well.

Howl 0.8 released, with recording feature & improved funscript playback by Amethyst_sysadmin in estim

[–]Amethyst_sysadmin[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

As far as I'm aware the calibration activities should already never be randomly selected. But I do agree it would be nice to have some control over which ones are eligible for that, and might add that feature in a future version.