Break Speed Update
Sorry for the late reply, I must have missed a notification email.
The latest version is out (v1.5) for Android, iPhone and BlackBerry. This one works on iPhone 4.
You can actually thank the iPhone 4 for this update - Apple introduced some really nice voice processing with their mic. It's very nice for voice, but horrendous for Breaks. They didn't document this, and didn't give you a way to turn it off. So for the past bunch of weeks, I've been developing an all new break recognition technology. It's much more CPU intensive and more complex than the original by a few orders of magnitude, but the up-shot is that it is really hard to get a failure.
In fact, when I had it running on a phone, I started testing. I took it to the local pool halls (including some that are also bowling alleys, bars, nice places and dives), with the intention of finding out just how robust it is. This means pushing some limits until it breaks. It took me two days to see my first failure, because that's about how long it took me to get a cue ball to bounce 4-5 feet off the table. For the record, I had one actually manage to make it all the way through my light fixture to my ceiling fan, and Break Speed didn't miss the break.
The BB is getting better. How much it is improved is based on the type of device you have. The Pearl is the most challenging, and we're still fine-tuning that one. There will be an improvement, but not as much as we'd like to see yet. The other devices (like the 8800 and that line) will see a marked improvement. The reliability went from somewhere in the low 80% range to somewhere in the high 90% range from our tests.
The problem with the Pearl is that it first records at a lower bit rate than the iPhone/Android and then it decimates the audio with AGC, and THEN, it chews it up and spits it out in AMR format (compressed to preserve voice only.) If you actually play back these recordings, even a human being wouldn't know there was a break shot in that audio recording. Even still, I think we're seeing something like 60-80% range.
Here are some of the improvements:
Talking loudly/screaming (or even bend over the phone and scream at the top of your lungs at it) before the break will no longer confuse it.
Previously, if you were to break from the side rail and place the phone on that same rail, it could get confused because the stick vibration is right next to the mic. Not any more.
Previously, if you were to miscue but still have a valid break, the stick vibration from the miscue could confuse it. Not any more.
About the only things we've seen that have confused it are hard bounces after the break (I'm talking about balls getting airborne by 3-4 feet and landing on the table) and echoes. I still don't know how much we can do for echoes, because after all, that echo IS audio from a break.
If you're having problems with echoes, move the phone. Try the other side of the table. Try moving it into the corner of the room... there is almost always a place you can find that is a low-echo zone. At the US Open, I moved 10 feet along the side where the VIPs sit, and that's all it took.
General update:
So we're a bit behind schedule thanks to the iPhone 4 debacle and having to shut down our lives to create an all new break recognizer from scratch. But also thanks to the iPhone 4, we have a much more robust break recognizer. Next up is social media which shouldn't take too long, following that, we'll start digging into some of the user requests. Since we're doing them based on what users have requested, they'll get prioritized based on popularity.
