Software to support hand bell and tower bell simulators,

A) Handbell Manager for Ringingroom.com,

B) Serial Port interface for Tower Bell simulators for Ringingroom.com

C) Interface for mobile phones as simulators for Ringingroom.com and Abel

Background

Ringingroom.com provides a virtual belfry environment for ringers to ring together at a distance. It accepts keystrokes.  Using controllers, with real ringers on every bell or pairs of hand bells, it is now possible to ring performances which meet the Central Council framework criteria for peals.

A) Graham John's Handbell Manager adapted to work with handbell-like motion controllers

Handbell Manager works with ActionXL controllers (available from his website) to provide a substitute for handbells. 

It was originally designed to work with Abel, Beltower and other desktop simulators. It runs on Windows computers.

NB this program will NOT work without the ActionXL controllers.

You must first download and install Handbell Manager from the Handbell Manager website.

The adapted program is attached in this zip file.

Unzip and place it with your other handbell manager files.

1) Open your browser and go to ringingroom.com and open a room. 

WARNING:  This MUST be done first, because the current version of the program sends keystrokes to whatever program currently has focus (i.e is the active window on the screen) This will be corrected soon.

The program does not protect you against misuse - if you operate the controllers with another program's window open it will get the keystrokes, which could have unexpected, inconvenient, possibly catastrophic effects, if those keystrokes make the program do something unexpected.  No liability can be accepted for any such misuse.

2) Open the modified Handbell manager for ringingroom.

3) The Options are now set to ring the pair at the bottom of the ringingroom screen by default.  (Ringing room lets you move all the bells around)

{Otherwise the bells you want to ring can be defined explicitly in "Options", so
if you want to ring 3 & 4, set
Handbell 1 Backstroke and Handstroke to 3
Handbell 2 Backstroke and Handstroke to 4  }

The buttons perform actions that are useful in ringingroom.

4) Bring ringingroom in your browser back into focus (the controllers won't work until you do)

5) You can now ring the bells

6) To avoid sending keystrokes to other programs, close Handbell Manager for Ringingroom  before closing the browser page.

B) An interface for ringingroom.com to work with tower bells and tower bell simulators which send their timings to Windows Desktop simulators like Abel via the control signals in the Serial port, or which send characters by the serial port (e.g Bagley box).

The program is attached in this zip file. (Updated to v 0.5 15.4.2020) 

(Version 0.3 was a completely new program, but did not always work

Version 0.4 now believed to work properly

Version 0.5 missing bell strokes on some installations fixed)

Unzip and place it anywhere.

1) Open your browser and go to ringingroom.com and open a room. 

This MUST be done first, because the  program won't be able to find ringing room) 

2) Open the interface program and follow its  brief instructions.

3) The Options are now set to ring the right hand bell at the bottom of the Ringingroom screen.  (Ringing room lets you move all the bells around)

4) The program will  ringingroom in your browser back into focus automatically

5) You can now ring your bells

C) An interface to allow mobile phones to be used with Ringingroom.com and Abel

Phone Handbell Interface v0.1 (c) R H Johnston, 19.4.2020  ringprog@rhj.org.

The program is available here - it does not require installation and can be run from anywhere.

The following instructions appear on screen

It uses Android (v5+) mobile phones as dummy handbell controllers
 This program sends keys strokes j and f to the current window that has  focus, so USE WITH CARE- Keystrokes to other programs might cause problems, as discussed above!
It is hardwired to work with Ringing Room and Abel ringing windows, and has default settings that should normally work ok.

To use, for each phone (up to 2),install HyperIMU from Google Play

Open it, and Tap the 3bars top left,

select 'sensor list',

     turn on 'MPL Accelerometer.

Select Settings,

      Stream Protocol UDP, Sampling rate 15 (ignore warning),

     Server IP address - that of your computer on network,- a list will be displayed of possible addresses to try, but probably only one will work.
     Server port number 5555; 

Header,

     turn on Timestamp.

Start HyperIMU, swing & stop the phone like a handbell.  Hold it so the narrow top side of phone is where the clapper would be
with the screen facing away from palms, so two phones face each other

The program will report it has started receiving

In use there are some adjustments possible using the keyboard
ESC = quit. 
HyperIMU can chart output - blue bottom R corner - this can be useful, but the phone stops streaming to the computer
 J/K, F/G make controller 1/2 more/less sensitive to accelerations - helpful if you are having problems striking, or to adjust the time of strike
 +/- lengthens/shortens the Debounce period after a blow has struck - this is the time after a strike when no strikes will be allowed.
D diagnostic output acceleration, angles x,y,z On/Off  - this gives information only needed for reporting problems back to me.

Let me know if there are any problems.

R H Johnston 6.4.2020, 15.4.2020, 20.4.2020

Other Ringing Training Materials

Website through which I can be contacted

http://ringingtraining.pbworks.com/w/page/139497975/Interface%20for%20Ringingroom_com%20for%20Towerbell%20simulators