Easy WiFi Controller- Turn your mobile phone into a controller!

I am hoping to use the phone gyro to make an object move.

 

If you want to make a phone object move on the same device though why use EWC and not use Unity directly. I could understand if you were using it as a controller for a different device for multiplayer or another reason I could totally understand but I am confused on why use EWC on the same device and just have one app instead of two.

 

Hi,
I am interested in the asset for a future project.
How deeply integrated is the client code with Unity?
I am asking because I would like to port the client code to Xamarin studio for a more lightweight client and hopefully would have to redo only the UI code ideally.

 

Sorry for the delay I didn't get a forum alert. Most of the components are fairly integrated with Unity. The core of the product is plain dot net but there are better protocols if you are using Xamarin. It can certainly be done but all your client controls would need to be decoupled.

 

Hi,
I am developing a VR project for firefighting training, I think that Easy Wifi Controller is a very useful tool for my project.I had successfully used Easy Wifi Controller's joystick and Dpad to adjust the position of the fire in my scene,Also I want use my smartphone as an controller to control fire on/off by the custom button controller,and adjust the smoke density by custom slider controller, but I am not a programmer,I usually use playmaker to develop my project, so I want ask that how can I use Easy Wifi Controller with playmaker without codeing, Thanks!

 

I'm not that familiar with playmaker but I would assume the process to achieving these things in playmaker would be similar regardless of whether or not you would be using Easy Wifi Controller. How would you achieve this in Playmaker if you were just doing things local? That might give me a clue on how to make it work with Easy Wifi Controller.

 

Hi,Thanks very much for your quickly reply.

I had created a very simple scene to show how the Playmaker work.In this scene,there is a sphere and a button on-screen. when I press the button, the color will toggle between red and green.

I use Playmaker to create a FSM for the sphere,after then I add an action(Set Material Color) for it without any coding.

So I would hope if you can design some new proxy function between Easy Wifi Controller and Playmaker instead using any custom controller(Notify Method).oryou can create a playmaker addon function for Easy Wifi Controller for many many non-programmer just like me?I think if you can add these function to bridge Playmaker and Easy Wifi Controller, the Easy Wifi Controller will become a "Must have" tools for my projects in future.and it will be TRUELY EASY!!

Thanks again.

 

I'll take a look at there documentation as well over the next few days and let you know. I would think full official support would be too much especially for all the different items and combinations that EWC has, but what specific actions do you need/want at the moment so I can attempt to see on a smaller scale how long this would take. It sounded like server side reading the button and slider?

 

Yes,just as your reply,I think that if the Easy Wifi Controller has some ability to pass its button and slider event outside to Playmaker,then I will use these actions to trigger other playmaker's inside action(for example, GameObject--Activate Game Object,Transform--Set Position,UnityObject--Set Property ).
I want to use EWC Client custom buttons to hide/show fire in my firefighting training scene remotely by my smartphone or tablet pad(Playmaker's action:GameObject--Activate Game Object), also use EWC Client custom buttons to set the positon of the first person character or camera with my predefined value(Playmaker's action:Transform--Set Position),and use EWC Client custom sliders to adjust the denisty of the smoke(Playmaker's action:UnityObject--Set Property).
Thanks very much for your enthusiastic help.

 

I've taken my first look at Playmaker actions and this is going to take awhile. Also, even if it's done it's essentially going to not be super ideal since it would essentially be a crude replacement for the server side controls just within playmaker. Let me give a concrete example:

The slider control at it's core is values from -1 to 1. The standard server side control adds on top of that many of the normal things you'd want to do with this (move objects, rotate them, specify what sensitivity, etc.). Playmaker also does these things (move things, change color, etc.). Rewriting these entire EWC controls in the playmaker would take a lot of time and isn't really feasable.

What I can do is just expose the bare bones raw data with a few weeks work meaning write an action say GetSliderValue and in the state that this action is in would have similar dropdowns for control name and which player. This would essentially then allow you to fetch that raw value between -1 and 1 and use playmaker float methods to see what the value is and then use more playmaker methods to do what you want based on that value.

For your button example you would have a similar GetButtonValue. It's going to give you just the raw telemetry though so you'd need a lot of additional states to compare the values to previous and map them to which transitions you'd then want to call based on the values.

Would this be helpful at the low level in playmaker or does that sound like it wouldn't be helpful enough for you to use? Note these aren't events things like sliders don't really have events they just tell you what the value is currently. In playmaker this means that they will be actions that will populate variables that you create.

 

Hi I am a student working on a project for a game production course. I am using the EWC. I am having issues with implementing more players into the network while using my custom movement script based on touch input. I can send a copy of my movement script, would you be able to help us integrate that script into the EWC's network code?

 

You can send the script if you like to the support email address on the asset store page and I can certainly take a look.

In general you just want to follow the same pattern as any of the existing server side controls by having the script accept a control name and the player you wish it to control, and then calling same EWC methods for registering the control.

 

Thanks, I am very happy for your reply.
Yes, The GetSliderValue and GetButtonValue are just what I need,in another word,it will solve exatly my needs. I think these new function added for EWC will be very useful and easily for my project in future.
I will wait for these new funtion with a few weeks. Love EWC!!

 

Hello @greggtwep16
your asset looks very exciting!
I am curious how did you achieve your Worldy Cup game to work as multiplayer wifi controller with 'full game view on all devices'?

Look forward hearing from you,
Kreso

 

Worldy Cup isn't my game it was made by @ugur . That just like with any networked product you typically do not send over pixels it's far too much information even when inside a LAN and not the internet. Instead you send things like position, rotation, etc. and leave Unity to detect collisions, render, and everything else separately on each device. Every so often you'll generally have the device that has the master data (in EWC's case the server) send the absolute information so that the separate simulations stay in sync.

The general concept is you keep the transmission size low by sending the underlying data (Vector3's, float's, etc.) so that you can send the data fast enough so that things are "mirrored".

 

Thank you for the prompt reply @greggtwep16
Oh, gotcha.
I am using deterministic/lockstep physics engine, that either works through online server (that syncs input times etc) or on the same machine. Maybe there is a way to make it work..

 

In the EWC paradigm that deterministic physics engine would be running on the server and all the clients would then be told where they currently are etc. to be displayed. You would essentially only have the "game" running on the server, and the clients would only be giving there input, and then rendering with the info from the server. The input would be sent to the server via the normal EWC controls, and the info for rendering could be sent back through the backchannel datatypes. Info for rendering would still mean position, rotation, state, etc. Sending the entire screen as pixels is far too much data for the network.

 

Hello there,
yes, as Greg said, for Worldy Cup using Easy Wifi Controller for Wifi MP i did it the way that one of the game instances acts as server and the others join as clients (that all is handled for you by EWC) and then to summarise it the clients send input and the server sends update states to the clients.
Now from game to game it can be different what makes sense to send as update states back.
Like whether one calls the methods triggering the full action on the client or sending actual animation and logic state/position/rotation etc type info of objects or similar and applying that directly.

In your physics based game you could do it in various approaches, too, of course.
For example all game instances could run the physics fully on their end, but i would only recommend that for (rare) cases where the physics sim has zero gameplay impact. Else even minor variations in how the simulation runs in different clients could lead to different results on different clients then leading to different gameplay impact having results.

So when physics sim has a gameplay impact (often the case), you could for example run the whole physics sim on the server game instance and run it on the clients, too but then add a sync feature where the server sends positions/rotations or state info etc at an interval and the clients update positions/rotations/states of objects etc accordingly to get back in sync with the server.
Or not run the sim on the clients at all and instead get all the position/rotation/state info etc of the objects from the server side and set it without much logic running on the client at all. (This has different pros and cons like yes, you 100% all the time have the same state for everything on server and client but involves more work on some ends and if not fast enough connection/too much latency, well, seems like stuttering or low framerate/update rate running)

Many fighting games have it in a way for example where the gameplay/game logic is run on the clients, too but the server game running instance dictates the valid state and so when the client instances are out of sync/in different state they "get rewinded" to the proper state.

One could talk longer about the pros and cons of different approaches, a topic too big for my coffee break, but i hope that gives you some pointers =)

 

Thank you @greggtwep16 & @ugur
I guess my biggest takeaway is that WiFi controller is much more than that - a networking solution.
I will think on what is the best way to implement it in my solution.

Thank you!

Kreso

 

I'd be hesitant to call it a networking solution (ie. like photon, bolt, etc.). It's primarily a tool to turn your phone into a controller. Calling it more general purpose than that is fine, but only if we are talking about data streams. As soon as you find yourself wanting to do rpc's a lot you would be better off with a generic solution.

If mostly what you want to do is data streams it will have less overhead than the other solutions. If you only have a few RPC like calls it can be made to work with the above approaches but they are a bit hacky. EWC is also only designed for a LAN, not the internet.

If this raises more questions I can certainly talk more in detail just let me know.

 

I just purchased easy wifi controller and it works fine on 5.4, however, I can't get it running on 5.5.x (I tried both 5.5.0 and 5.5.1). Unfortunately, I start my project from 5.5.1, and can't roll back to 5.4. Can anyone help on making a 5.5.x workable version? Thanks a lot!

 

It works fine for both versions here. You can verify this in a blank project with the examples.

There are things to watch out for as normal.
1. If testing on windows you will get a popup from windows firewall from each application that tries to use the network to allow. Different projects will each ask. Make sure you click allow or go into windows firewall manually and allow. Same goes with different versions of Unity and the editor.
2. Make sure there aren't runtime errors thrown in your project. Errors elsewhere can impact EWC scripts from running.

If neither of these work you can always zip up your project and send it to the support email address and I'll take a look.

 

Thanks for your prompt response. I will double check and will get back to you if things still not working well.

Phoenix

 

@tangbinbin Just an update that I'm still in process with trying to get things integrated with playmaker. My first attempt didn't go well, so I'll give another approach a shot hopefully it goes better.

 

Thanks,Greggtwep16,I will wait for your update for EWC powered by Playmaker.

 

Hi @tangbinbin I think the attached script should allow you to get the slider value within playmaker. I don't have playmaker to verify so if you wouldn't mind testing it and letting me know. If the slider value works I can certainly make any of the other controls that you need (button, joystick, etc.) fairly quickly. When you paste this file into your project you should see the action under the input category. Then simply enter in the control name and player as you would like normal with whatever name you gave the controls and the value should be populated in Current Value. Due to the way playmaker works with enums the player number should be typed in 1 for "player 1", 2 for "player 2", etc. The equivalent of "any player" is 999 if you need that.

 

Hi, is Easy Wifi Controller compatible with XBOX One or PS4?

 

I don't have a devkit to test on consoles, but it would depend if those platforms support Mono's implementation of UDP sockets and threading. I've dug through their documentaiton and really the only answer I can give you is I don't know. My suspicion would no, not without some changes but I don't have a way to test.

I'm certainly always willing to spend some time on it if you run into issues, but that would involve sending me any errors you receive on a dev kit, making changes, and then sending it for you to test.

 

I was able to get it working on my Mac while on vacation. I do have a windows computer, so I will begin the xbox process shortly. Thanks!

 

Hi.

First, I love the package. Works like a charm with mobile devices as controllers and Unity Editor running the server. Great Job. I was trying to use a second computer on the same wifi as a client to make debugging easier without having to deploy every change, Couldn't get it to work. Should this work? The client says Sending out client broadcast... but no connection.

Cheers,
Simon

 

Yeah any combination of the supported devices will work. For debugging, you can even have both ends running on the same machine if you check the "run in background" setting in player settings and have them windowed so they can both be displayed at the same time. One thing to be aware of on PC is to make sure that the software firewall is allowing traffic through. Usually, you get a popup when you run it the first time (and the editor pop up usually comes the first time you run unity) but not always and if you don't allow the program to access the network it won't get through.

If it's not a software firewall and your only deploying to one of the ends, make sure that you have the appropriate settings for either end to timeout accordingly when the other stops transmitting (meaning have the server sending heartbeats, and both ends timeout set to what you wish, you can see a typical setup in the example scenes). Otherwise if the end you haven't deployed to is still running and you don't have any timeout it's going to just assume the original other end is still there and not rediscover a new other end when you recompile and run.

 

Hi, do you have example of multiplayer on versus mode. Something like your zany-bounce game where player facing each other. Is it doable to play on single PC and dual monitor and having diferent app for each display?

 

EWC isn't really designed for that usecase (two full apps running). It is designed for a single app with multiple phone controllers so if you are actually looking to provide multiple views then it would have to be split screen with multiple cameras, but a single app. On PC even if you were to run two apps at the same time (which I allow but really only for debugging) you are still going to have the problem of focus of the window which wouldn't be ideal.

It sounds like you're looking for a more standard online functionality at which point it'd probably be better to use UNET, Photon, Bolt, etc. or whichever multiplayer service you prefer. EWC is more about having more simplified controllers. You could do a screen mirror by sending the underlying data but one game is still going to be the server where everything is really happening and that player would have an advantage (unlike if two phones are both using the server then neither of them would have an advantage).

Hope that helps. Let me know if you have any more questions.

 

Can i use the phone for something like this?

using gyro?

 

Yeah that's not an issue, there is a built in control that does this for you (matchOrientationGyro). However, obviously that is just a single app on your PC. Adding a second controller one for each player is also not an issue (or more players), but it will still be a single app on your PC (not two).

 

Very cool, thank's for your fast reply. Will definitely buy this asset.

 

hello, can you help me? I want to konw server how to send or broadcast message to client?thanks!@greggtwep16

 

Broadcast in networking terms means something very specific. I assume you mean how to send a message from the server back to the client. In EWC terms this is called a backchannel. In the steering example the speedometer needle is controlled via a float backchannel so you can check that out. There is also a section on backchannels in the documentation. If you meant something else let me know.

 

thank you very much! Maybe I did not express it clearly. I would like to use EWC server to control multiple client. Server broadcast or send a message to the specified client, client to receive the message to perform the action.

 

This is opposite to the way EWC is intended to be used, it can be done but not sure if it's the best tool to do so. There aren't really premade controls (joysticks, buttons, etc.) going from server -> clients just the data backchannels (string, float, int, etc.). However, assuming that it's just data you have you would use the registered backchannels to send the information you want. If you wanted it broadcast you'd set the backchannel to "any player" and if you want it to go to a specific player you'd select that player number in the inspector.

For more information on the backchannels in general I'd check out the documentation and the steering wheel example (specifically the speedometer needle).

This has me curious though what is your usecase? I'm struggling to envision what type of game this is that one PC is controlling 2,4 or however many clients (phones?).

 

thanks.using one pc controlling 20 gearvr.

 

I assume you mean just sending messages to them since wearing one Head Mounted Display is hard enough . You can certainly use the backchannels to send messages to either all the clients or specific clients. It is important to keep the messages short though especially with 20 players. Per frame it should be under 512 bytes (half a kb) otherwise you are going to see latency.

 

I checked your scene and code, I still did not understand how the server through the code to send a string to the client. Can you help me write a simple example? thank you very much.

 

The backchannel section of the documentation outlines the steps (it starts on page 13)

http://ladmertech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Easy-WiFi-Controller-Documentation.pdf

Basically, you have the pair of backchannel controls (in your case string server backchannel and string client backchannel) that you put in the respective scenes. Set their inspector values with what you want (name, player, etc.). On the server you call setValue() with your data. On the client you list the method you want to call in the inspector and it will call that function with your data. Don't forget to have the appropriate global values in EasyWifiManager as well for sending backchannels.

It's fairly late here but I'll check for a reply in the morning. The steering example with the float backchannel is about as simple as it gets (just one float for the speed) if your looking for something live to play with I'd suggest that.

 

i attach my scene config file. when click button send message is broken. can you tell me how to modify? thanks @greggtwep16

 

Your console indicates a null reference exception in your script, which is why it never sets the value. I didn't see anything obviously wrong with just the pictures but it's hard to tell from just the 3 pics. Can you zip that up and send it to me?

 

Hi,
is it possible to use a "standard" Unity slider on the client device? The sliders in your examples have a different behaviour as I need for my control device. I would like to control each axis on a robot arm (e.g. Kuka Robot) with a sliders. Therefore I need the slider value to be fix and not to fall back to 0. Could you help me with my problem?

 

If you don't want the slider to fall back you should be able to just delete the 4th line of mapInputToDataStream() in the SliderClientController . Without that line which sets the values for nubMovement back to 0 each frame it should behave like you're expecting.

 

thanks.
scene file

 

A couple of things were found in your scene. First off there is a bug in EWC when you have no forward data flowing (your scene only has backchannels and is probably the first one being used like this. Normally you have at least one forward control. I'll get this update on the store but it takes time to get through Unity review. In the meantime replace the following method in EasyWiFiController.cs with what is here and EWC will then be ok even with no forward data.

Code (CSharp):

1.         //used by the server listening to a client controller data message
2.         public static void listenClientControllerData(string message)
3.         {
4.             string[] splitMessage, splitMessage2;
5.             string packetNumber;
6.             string currentServerKey;
7.  
8.             if (isVerbose)
9.             {
10.                 Debug.Log("Recieved Controller Data... " + message);
11.             }
12.             splitMessage = message.Split(EasyWiFiConstants.SPLITARRAY_COLON, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
13.             packetNumber = splitMessage[1];
14.             if (splitMessage.Length > 2)
15.             {
16.                 splitMessage = splitMessage[2].Split(EasyWiFiConstants.SPLITARRAY_NEWLINE, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
17.  
18.                 for (int i = 0; i < splitMessage.Length; i++)
19.                 {
20.                     //here we have each line (including the server key)
21.                     splitMessage2 = splitMessage[i].Split(EasyWiFiConstants.SPLITARRAY_POUND, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
22.                     currentServerKey = splitMessage2[0];
23.  
24.                     //pass the rest of the line (without server key) into the mapping function
25.                     if (splitMessage2.Length > 1 && serverState != EasyWiFiConstants.CURRENT_SERVER_STATE.Disconnecting && controllerDataDictionary.ContainsKey(currentServerKey))
26.                     {
27.                         controllerDataDictionary[currentServerKey].mapNetworkDataToStructure(Convert.ToInt32(packetNumber), splitMessage2[1]);
28.                     }
29.                 }
30.             }
31.         }

The second thing is that in your server scene you were calling from the button press the send script but in the inspector the backchannel was set to none. You also had these components attached to EasyWifiManager but those weren't the ones being called from the button. Deleting the ones on EasyWifiManager and populating the inspector on the other one and the setvalue method was being called.

The last thing wasn't really an issue in your simple test but if you plan on having more backchannels it's important to note that EWC works on data streams and condenses All info into a packet each frame. In your example you expect "Msg From Server..." to only be sent when you click the button. However it will be sent every frame so you should designate a message that means "no data" if you wish to do nothing.

After changing the above your demo now behaves as expected.