Hey all, I’m not totally sure where to put this but figured this topic made sense.
I have the Handy 1.0, have had it for a few years now. I currently have it on FW 4, though this is a recent upgrade.
My issue is that Scriptplayer seems to get out of sync/disconnect from the Handy every time a new script is loaded after a few minutes. Its a 50/50 whether the script loads and starts playing when a new video comes on, and if it does then it will get out of sync within the first 3 minutes. Shorter videos seem to suffer more from this?
My solution is to simply pause the video at the start each time, but this is really annoying and seems to defeat the point of a playlist? I’m on the latest version of Scriptplayer as well 1.2.3. I’ve noticed this problem on basically all versions of Scriptplayer and the Handy FW up to now, no updates have ever solved this problem.
Additionally sometimes a new script simply cannot load, I never get the confirmation message, till I switch videos and then the script loads. Even then sometimes this doesn’t work and I have to hit “Connect to Handy” again. After 30 sec-1min a bunch of messages come through and I’m synced back up.
Turning on the setting “Clear script” as the default behavior in the Scripts menu seems to have helped a little, but did not solve the problem entirely.
I’m wondering if others have this experience as well, or if theres some magic setting that I’m missing.
Very close to downgrading to FW 3.x because at least the bluetooth still worked with Initface? Even though the resolution on scripts is crap its still better than disconnecting every time a new video plays… and honestly the wifi connection seemed more stable on 3.x as well. However with Scriptplayer updating we can’t use the old FW either…
I’ve had similar issues and I “think” they somewhat correspond with the newer server that the Handy uses.
It might be that ScriptPlayer is not using all the proper instruction commands, or it could be that the newer server doesn’t “listen” as reliably as the older server did.
One user suggested that the server/ScriptPlayer pair is not aware of a video change and that some videos being shorter than others can mess up the synchronization as the next video loads at 0:00 but the script position starts where the last video left off.
In any case, the new server is much faster to start playing but the experience with ScriptPlayer has suffered.
I always hope that something will soon be fine tuned so that it all works more reliably.
Can you try Handyverse . If it stays in sync here it is probably something in the scriptplayer app. If not, reach out to support or chat with us on our Discord.
@handyAlexander I will give this a try and comment back but I dont think I’ll have a way to reproduce the conditions on Handyverse since there isn’t a video playlist feature.
The disconnects happen only when the video changes, or shortly after the video changes. If I load a 40 minute video, pause it once, then hit play I’ll get through the whole 40 minutes with no issues. Then likely get a desync when the video changes again.
I also tried Glyph last night, an alternative to Scriptplayer, and I got very similar behavior. Whenever the video changes, the handy disconnects. I also notice that this issue tends to be worse in evening.. maybe when there is high traffic on the server?
This leads me to believe this is a server side issue, since multiple different programs seem to have an issue interacting with the handy servers, especially during peak times. Other people have reported this as well. I would really love if there was a local hosting option for the handy!
Use a bluetooth player called syncopathy instead. The FW4 bluetooth mode is the same as normal wifi mode without any stutter issues. The experience is good. Just search “syncopathy”.
Hey @handyAlexander will do when I get a bit of time here shortly.
I do have to report that even sycophany has issues with timing/disconnects on BT mode (though I struggle to get fw4 into the BT only mode) I think its really impressive they have the script resolution this good though so I’ve still been using it.
Overall I think this might have more to do with BT instability with Windows 10 than anything else, and so I may try changing my wifi chip. Or try on a new device soon and see if the issue persists.
Also my Handy is going on 3 years old now, with some serious mileage.