I thought it’d just be very fun to develop a new sense.
Remember vibrating belts and ankle bracelets that made you have a sense of the direction of north? (1, 2)
I made some LLMs make me an iOS app that does this! Except the sense doesn’t go away the moment you stop the app!
I am pretty happy about it! I can tell where’s north and became much better at navigating and relating different parts of the (actual) territory in my map. Previously, I would remember my paths as collections of local movements (there, I turn left); now, I generally know where places are, and Google Maps feel much more connected to the territory.
It can vibrate when you face north; even better, if you’re in headphones, it can give you spatial sounds coming from north; better still, a second before playing a sound coming from north, it can play a non-directional cue sound to make you anticipate the north sound and learn very quickly.
None of this interferes with listening to any other kind of audio.
It’s all probably less relevant to the US, as your roads are in a grid anyway; great for London though.
If you know how to make it have more pleasant sounds, or optimize directional sounds (make realistic binaural audio), and want to help, please do! The source code is on GitHub: https://github.com/mihonarium/sonic-compass/
This is really cool! My ADHD makes me rather place-blind, if I’m not intentionally forcing myself to pay attention to a route and my surroundings, I can get lost or disoriented quite easily. I took the same bus route to school for a decade, and I can’t trace the path, I only remember a sequence of stops. Hopefully someone makes an Android version, I’d definitely check it out.
Everyone should do more fun stuff![1]
I thought it’d just be very fun to develop a new sense.
Remember vibrating belts and ankle bracelets that made you have a sense of the direction of north? (1, 2)
I made some LLMs make me an iOS app that does this! Except the sense doesn’t go away the moment you stop the app!
I am pretty happy about it! I can tell where’s north and became much better at navigating and relating different parts of the (actual) territory in my map. Previously, I would remember my paths as collections of local movements (there, I turn left); now, I generally know where places are, and Google Maps feel much more connected to the territory.
If you want to try it, it’s on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sonic-compass/id6746952992
It can vibrate when you face north; even better, if you’re in headphones, it can give you spatial sounds coming from north; better still, a second before playing a sound coming from north, it can play a non-directional cue sound to make you anticipate the north sound and learn very quickly.
None of this interferes with listening to any other kind of audio.
It’s all probably less relevant to the US, as your roads are in a grid anyway; great for London though.
If you know how to make it have more pleasant sounds, or optimize directional sounds (make realistic binaural audio), and want to help, please do! The source code is on GitHub: https://github.com/mihonarium/sonic-compass/
unless it would take too much time, especially given the short timelines
This is really cool! My ADHD makes me rather place-blind, if I’m not intentionally forcing myself to pay attention to a route and my surroundings, I can get lost or disoriented quite easily. I took the same bus route to school for a decade, and I can’t trace the path, I only remember a sequence of stops. Hopefully someone makes an Android version, I’d definitely check it out.
Trying it out now, this is pretty fun! I think I’d use it more if it had an apple watch version that I could keep constantly running.