Audio Recording on Windows Phone7.1

Audio recording from the windows phone mic uses the XNA framework.

So when I added the audio calls it requires a GameTimer update which has a FrameAction function. This wasn't already in my app when i started because I didn't use the XNA game template.

So I'll have to add one, But I already added a Tick update function for updates. I wonder if this will overlap in a bad way...

right now im using:

_timer = new DispatcherTimer();

_timer.Interval = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(30);

_timer.Tick += new EventHandler(Tick);

_timer.Start();

for updates. so, possibly, i can switch that to being a GameTimer instead? giving that a try...

So, it looks like the dispatchTimer can be replaced with GameTimer and the functions in it do the same thing

_timer = new GameTimer();

_timer.UpdateInterval = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(30);

_timer.Update += Tick;

_timer.Start();

This is the new code, GameTimer() replaced DispatcherTimer() and UpdateInterval replaces Interval, and Tick was replaced with Update and rather than a new EventHandler i just add the name of the function thats going to be updated. Then I start the timer.

Does the same thing it seems.

BUT now im getting this crappy error:

A first chance exception of type 'System.InvalidOperationException' occurred in Microsoft.Xna.Framework.dll

An unhandled exception of type 'System.InvalidOperationException' occurred in Microsoft.Xna.Framework.dll

Additional information: FrameworkDispatcher.Update has not been called. Regular FrameworkDispatcher.Update calls are necessary for fire and forget sound effects and framework events to function correctly. See http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=193853 for details.

seems like I need to add something... a short bit of reading I find I need to call it manually for some reason...

in my tick I added:

void Tick(object sender, GameTimerEventArgs e)

{

   FrameworkDispatcher.Update(); // this was needed?

   ...

}

And that seems to have fulfilled what i need for calling the framework dispatcher... whatever that is.

so now it looks like i can get a buffer filled with mic stream data bytes. Golly, in the last four days I've only written about 480 lines of code. but every method was something I had to learn about.

hopefully, someone, other than me, found a line of code in this blog useful.

Timers and Ticks in Windows Phone 7

So I've come to the conclusion that this code

Timer stateTimer = new Timer(tcb, autoEvent, 1000, 250);

Sucks. The Timer Class gets garbage collected far too quickly.
I had added a timer.Start() and the function just debug.writeline to an int that counted up 30 times a second.
So after a few seconds it would count to about 213 or so, then it would stop. Nothing stopped it, i just disappeared even though the function wasn't told to stop. So I think it was garbage collected. And i found a few places that talked about the timer having to be called in a way that prevented it from being garbage collected. LAME!

However!

using System.Windows.Threading;
this line gives you a different way to do the exact same thing, and it's a lot more readable.

in the class define a nice variable
public class SomeClass
{

DispatcherTimer _timer;

public MainPage()
{
//this timer works way better.
_timer = new DispatcherTimer();
_timer.Interval = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(30);
_timer.Tick += new EventHandler(Tick);
_timer.Start();
  InitializeComponent();  }

void Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

//updating in a tick

}

}
that's it, that's all, nothing else needed.

The tick is called 30 times a second, and it never stops!

The other Timer() function gives me problems, this one doesn't I don't know why. But I am doing things on the windows phone, so that might have something to do with it.

Update 5pm
Moving into other things on the Phone, basically if you can access the MotionController vs the Gyro or the Accelerometer, you're better off. Things like getting Yaw Pitch and Roll or even Quaternion are way more useful than gyro and accelerator alone. Something I'd say you should do is just ignore phones that don't use motion controller. It's obvious, those phones will suck anyway.

Comparing data from the iPhone and the Lumia 900, and moving on to recording sound.

So firstly I'm seeing that the acceleration data is more muted on the Lumia, or rather maybe the iPhone is more sensitive. The overall values coming out of the Nokia are smaller in comparison. But they are consistent, so it seems like I just need to add a multiplier to make it more like the iPhone data. Also, is it me or are the X and Y switched on the Lumia from the iPhone.

Also, i need a better office chair...

My next trick will be sending recorded audio over the websocket.

WebSockets on the windows Phone 7.1 day 3

Okay, so im sending what I think is a websocket connection attempt. The server logs this out:


Client Connected!!
==================
Client IP 127.0.0.1:60929
TimeStamp: 11:10:14.288
<0> GET
<1> /
<2> HTTP/1.1


<3> Upgrade:
<4> WebSocket


<5> Connection:
<6> Upgrade


<7> Sec-WebSocket-Version:
<8> 13


<9> Sec-WebSocket-Key:
<10> N2M4OWQ3MDgtOGYwNC00MQ==


<11> Host:
<12> 10.10.10.221:11111


<13> Origin:
<14> 10.10.10.221


<15> 


<16> SERVING FILE: ../../../www/index.html TO: 127.0.0.1:60929

So i think it's a http port I'm connecting to, but I'm pretty sure that it might be a web socket since there's all that sec-websocket-version: stuff thats in there. Rather confusing, but I think im getting closer. On the phone side of things I'm checking the websocket status and it's saying "connecting" so i think that's getting closer.

Update: 12pm

Reading up on "subProtocol" i find an RFC which states in the first line in the subProtocol section " _This section is non-normative._" so... This is going to be a very difficult read being that I don't even have any idea what the fuck that sentence even means. Even so, it's saying a sub-protocol is a sub-protocol, which explains nothing. This is why I hate talking to other programmers.


lunch break...
So I managed to notice that the app im sending things to was updating with funny error codes, and it was a bunch of errors coming from the websocket, so that's a good sign. I just have to format the out going stream to something that the websocket message receiver can understand.


the websocket() function is weird.

ws = new WebSocket(("ws://" + hostName + ":" + portNumber));
or
ws = new WebSocket(("ws://" + hostName + ":" + portNumber),"",null,null,"","",WebSocketVersion.DraftHybi00);

Update 3pm
Trying to set the websocket version isnt easy, I have to fill in the rest of the garbage that the method expects. So i'm hoping that the first version works since the more detailed version requires a ton of crap that I don't feel like filling in. AH mother f*cker... so the phone wants to talk in Rfc6455 and server is Hybi00 so i do have to fill in the rest of that shit. damnit...


Update 4:30pm

Yay, managed to fulfill the damn full version of the websocket function. You using string.empty and null you can fill in the junk that doesn't need to be filled right now for testing.


WebSocketVersion ver = WebSocketVersion.DraftHybi00;// <-- need to switch to this mode.
string subProt = "HTTP / 1.1";
ws = new WebSocket(("ws://" + hostName + ":" + portNumber), subProt, string.Empty, null, string.Empty,string.Empty,ver);

Finally got the version of the prototcol to be DraftHybi00 which is what the server is expecting. Now im only getting one weird error... but I can at least test the other versions of the websocket. For one thing, subProtocol is a string. What it expected in that string was difficult to find. So just randomly guessing I found on some RFC.

On your own you can replace ("ws://" + hostName + ":" + portNumber) with a regular url as long as you use ws:// instead of http:// then follow the ip address or web address with a : and a port number that makes sense, web is 80 sometimes on your local area network you might use 8181 or soemthing that your websocket server is listening to.

"CONNECT example.com HTTP/1.1"

so i just tried putting "HTTP/1.1" into the subprotocol, nothing complained, so I'm just going to go with that as the subprotocol. Until I can find a better string to use than that I'll stick with it.

horray! looks like the server side is at least saying

RECEIVED NO DATA


RECEIVED NO DATA


RECEIVED NO DATA


When I send a string through my websocket. that means i just need to format a string to send to it!

it's working!

So now i just gotta format my socket data into a form that the server can understand. and in my case it's a custom server thing so there's nothing i can share about it here.

Silverlight websockets and windows phone day 2

Unproductive weekend is over, now I have to get back to websockets on the phone.
Downloaded the source for websockets4 from http://websocket4net.codeplex.com/ but the example code still gives me errors after adding various things to the project.

Tried to use the nuGet plugin from visual studio and I get an error

PM> Install-Package WebSocket4Net
Attempting to resolve dependency 'Json.Net (≥ 4.0.5.14411)'.
Install-Package : Unable to resolve dependency 'Json.Net (≥ 4.0.5.14411)'.
At line:1 char:16
+ Install-Package <<<<  WebSocket4Net
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [Install-Package], InvalidOperationException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : NuGetCmdletUnhandledException,NuGet.PowerShell.Commands.InstallPackageComman 
   d


PM> 
So that failed. And there's no obvious way to get help, damnit. First experience with nuGet sucks. first experience with websockets4 sucks. So i try to get Json from somewhere else, and try to use that, and nothing new happens with the dependencies other than I have more references added in the directory.

So im going to try http://html5labs.interoperabilitybridges.com/prototypes/websockets/websockets/download
the sort of official implementation of websockets. from the Microsoft site I find that I need to include "using System.Json" which I don't have. So I also need to go get that. So after more reading I find that Json is not supported by Windows Phone, so another dead end.

None of those projects worked with sockets as the functions that I needed like TcpClient dont exist for Windows Phone. So WebSocket4Net doesn't do much without the TcpClient, or things like Listen... looking at that again to see if there's something I missed...

update 6pm
further investigation leads me to believe that websocket4net might still have some solutions, it's just undocumented and opaque. WebSocketSamples.zip from their site should shed some light on how the functions are used. I hope.

So, im doing something liket this...
ws = new WebSocket(("ws://" + hostName + ":" + portNumber));

ws.Opened += new EventHandler(ws_Opened);
ws.Open();
Debug.WriteLine("state?" + ws.State.ToString());
So the Output for that ends up like
state?Connecting
So im guessing that there's something missing on the server side.
But it is doing something... I think im getting closer.

Silverlight Windows Phone and Sockets part 1 of an on going learning experience.

So im going to be learning how to write a silverlight app on a windows phone to send gyro data to a pc. Sounds simple, but from the get go I found that the http version of socket is really damn slow, so I'm supposed to use websocket so i've been told. Right now I have an HTTP version of this working which is really slow.

so here it goes. I'm going to read
http://www.rajneeshnoonia.com/blog/2010/12/silverlight-websockets-duplex-communication/
and
http://mtaulty.com/CommunityServer/blogs/mike_taultys_blog/archive/2010/07/27/silverlight-and-websockets.aspx

so hopefully I'll be able to wrap my head around sockets in general by the end of the day.
So websockets allow TCP over a single socket. and Wiki says that any client can use websockets not just browsers. Which is good since im writing a silverlight client. Wiki also mentions "realtime games" which is good since I need to send gyro data as fast as possible from the phone to the pc to use the phone as a controller.

So the wiki technical overview mentions that some browsers dont support this for security reasons, im hoping that the latest version of silverlight im running does support websockets, or im SOL.

Wiki mentions something about a handshake, which is what my fellow programmer mentioned, so it seems like im on the right track. Okay so enough with the wiki, onto the URLs i mentioned.

first with http://mtaulty.com/ he mentions TCP being full duplex and open and closes a connection only at the beginning and end of a session. I want to do this, so again seems like im on the right track. This is better than the http version of the app im working with right now with "using System.Net.Sockets;" in my C# app so far.

he also mentions that i should read http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-socket-protocol/ but really? it's a gigantic unformatted txt file... WTF? it does mention a lot of UTF8 looking bytes that are line breaks and stuff. so i'll just stick to that being something about the sorts of characters to send to make websockets do specific things.

but what? Now he's talking about http polling and other "tricks" and how great http is making use of sockets. No, i dont want http, it's slow!

okay, hes going back into websockets now. so it's looking like things are back on track....

reading about checking if your browser supports websockets, i'll skip this shit... and he just says use WebSockets open send close methods to use websockets... fucker, that didnt help worth shit.

after further research on msdn I find .NET Framework 4.5 has system.net.websockets, which is what I need, and it's a beta... so lets see if i can get it to work in visual studio 2010 found it here http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/confirmation.aspx?id=28978

i read somewhere that it's not side-by-side compatible with 4.0 so lets hope that the beta mostly works for what I need. since the WebSocket part of the framework is new I'm hoping that they spent a lot of time on this part to make it work right. crossing my fingers...

update ~4pm:
ah! so i found that mtaulty guys video posts which seem a lot more informative http://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/mtaulty/silverlight-4-beta-networking-part-9-udp-multicasting

I installed .NET 4.5 and there's no system.net.winsockets reference to add. I'm not sure what else might have been added but I can't really tell if there's a way to check if 4.5 installed correctly since it just over wrote 4.0 stuff. So I'm going ahead and Installing Visual Studio 2011 beta, so I hope that perhaps that might have the websocket thing I need to add to the project so I can write this client for the phone if the phone can even make use of the new .net libs through silverlight.

update ~7pm:
After installing the Visual Studio 2011 beta I'm met with a rather start grey everything. Kinda neat, but also pretty flat and it feels awkward with the windows 7 glassy frames. And, starting up a project I find I have to go to the on-line templates to find a Windows Phone template that might have what I need. And once I got that up I check for System.Net.Websockets and NOTHING I can't find the reference to add to my phone project. So I'm pretty much dead in the water.

looks like I'll have to write a small javascript web app to websocket data from silverlight to the PC.
We'll take a look at how that might work on monday. For now I'm going to go home and enjoy some Unrealscript and shoot things.