Announcement of player name and number

[joneal9305]

Just wondering if this is already in the app or if it's not can u add a way to announce the players name and number along with song. Ex- start the track. Walk out music begins and while music is playing it says "now up to bat. Number 9 Brice O'Neal". Really need a way to do both on our team and it doesn't look like the app does that. But I like every other feature of the app. Would make it even better.

[UpAllnite Software]

The app doesn't do the player introduction currently, but I had considered it during the development.   

When I was first writing the app, there was no built in support for text to speech in iOS devices, but iOS 7 does include that support so it may be possible to implement now.

However, I see one major complexity that I'm not sure how to work around...

In my experience, the announcing of the batters is done for both the home and visiting team but walkout songs are more of 'home only' thing.

Do you think it would be useful if the announcing was only done for the home team or would the app need to have some provision for entering visiting teams to announce as well?

[UpAllnite Software]

I tinkered around with the player name and number announcement this evening and it seems to work pretty well and is a pretty low risk feature to add.

I will include it in the next version which is going to beta test tomorrow.

What I did was to add a new option in the settings of the app to 'enable player announcements'   If you slide that to yes, then as the walkout song fades, you get Siri speaking:

"Now Batting, Number XX, Name"

Let me know how that works for you  ;D

[joneal9305]

That sounds awesome. And I wouldn't do the visitor team thing. Make them buy the app and do their own playlist. Haha. When will that option be available???? I haven't bought app yet because I wanted to see ur reply. If u can do that I will DEFINITELY be purchasing. It will be perfect for what we need. And I promise u it will have lots of other teams purchasing too once they hear it. I'm excited now. It won't always be the same person doing our music at games. So my other question is I know each person would have to buy the app for their phones but is there a way to save music where each person can just pull it back up no matter who's doing it?? So we don't have to do a playlist for every phone????

[joneal9305]

Oh and can u save certain points in a song.  To start later in the song. Like a chorus and not the beginning of song ??? Basically pick which part u want to start with.

[UpAllnite Software]

Ok, to answer your three questions:

Availability of the announcement Feature:
I am waiting for results from one beta tester before I submit the update to the app store.  Once it is submitted, it takes Apple about four days to approve it and add it to the store.  I would expect it should be out by Sunday or Monday of next week.

Copying the player config between devices:
There is an option to export the configured setup of the application which includes all player names, numbers, and song titles, from the entire app.   That export ends up as an email attachment that can be opened on another device to import.  There are details for that process on this forum in the FAQ board under title 'export/import'.  The destination device would need to have the exact same songs (by title) as the original device because the app cannot transfer the actual songs.  The actual music is all managed by the iTunes library on each device, you would just need to add the same songs to the itunes library of both devices.

Playing only parts of the song:
Yes, that is pretty much the entire premise of Walkout Song DJ and why I wrote it in the first place.  Walkout Songs are generally only about 11-15 seconds long and usually a chorus or something along those lines.   When you add a player and a song to the app, there is a configuration screen to allow you to pick where in the song to start and how long to play from that point.  When it reaches the end of the configured duration it does an automatic fade out.  The start and duration of each song is part of the configuration that would be exported and imported to another device so you should only have to set that up once.

[joneal9305]

Awesome. Thanks for replies. I'm about to be a salesman for your app. Seriously. Can get a lot of people to use it.

[UpAllnite Software]

I did submit the app to Apple tonight with the Player Announcement feature...

I do appreciate the word of mouth salesmanship as that has been very effective so far across the country.

All I would ask is that you put up a positive review on the iTunes store once the new version is available.

The old reviews get hidden when a new version is released so it would be nice to have something on there letting people know your experience with the app and how responsive my customer support is.

Thanks again for your suggestion...  I think it will be a very popular feature with the youth teams.

[joneal9305]

Ok got the update. Thanks. Now how do I do the player announcement??? Don't see a menu or settings icon.

[joneal9305]

I got it. Nevermind. Can I change voice?? Do I do that in Siri settings??

[UpAllnite Software]

I'm not sure about changing the voice...  I could only find that one Siri voice on any of my devices. 

The code does not pick any particular voice so I'm hoping as Apple expands the support then the app should pick up the default setting.  If I do find available API options for changing it, I will add a selection to later versions in the app settings.

[joneal9305]

I've got it on iphone and ipad. All settings turned on. But the ipad isn't doing the voice. And it does have Siri. Any suggestions???

[joneal9305]

Also I'm changing my Siri setting to a male voice but the app keeps doing a female voice.

[UpAllnite Software]

Does the ipad have ios 7?  The only thing I know that should prevent the announcement is ios 6.  There is no interface for apps to do voice generation with ios 6.

On the male voice, that was not an option before ios 7.1 and that just came out today.  I will investigate how to select that programmatically and add the option if it's possible.

[UpAllnite Software]

I verified in the iOS documentation that I do not yet have access to choose the Male Voice even with iOS 7.1

I anticipate that access will be added in future iOS versions, but until then we are stuck with the female one.