In Phone Loco Sounds (IPLS)
Virtual Sounds / In Phone Loco Sounds (IPLS)
Engine Driver can play synchronised locomotive sounds through your Android device/phones or through a BlueTooth speaker connected to it.
To enable In Phone Loco Sounds (IPLS) select an option in Throttle 1 Loco Sounds or Throttle 2 Loco Sounds (or both) preferences. Once enabled for either throttle a new menu option will be available from Throttle Screen to make subsequent changes easier:
To make it easy to switch sound profiles we recommend enabling the Action Bar button by setting the In phone sounds button preferences:
Loco Sounds
There is built in Support for a number of different type of locos:
Steam - 4 in-built profiles
Diesel - 3 in-built profiles
Plus you can create you own Custom profiles (see below)
Each IPLS Profile has a different number of speed steps. As the loco speed increases or decreases to a certain point a different sound will repeatedly play. Engine Driver can’t tell the actual speed of your loco, only the throttle setting. This is most apparent when the loco has momentum configured in the decoder. There is a preference that allows you to approximate the momentum of your loco for the IPLS in Engine Driver and an option to not clip the sounds (which enforces a minimum delay) These can be altered with the In Phone Momentum and the Don’t clip loco step sounds preferences.
The volume of the Loco Sounds, the Bell Sounds and the Horn/Whistle sound can be altered independently with the In Phone Loco Sounds Volume, the In Phone Bell Sounds Volume and the In Phone Horn/Whistle Sounds Volume preferences.
See In Phone Loco Sounds (IPLS) for details on how to activate and use the In Phone Loco sounds.
Bell, Horn/Whistle
Todo
Bell, Horn/Whistle
The Bell and Horn/Whistle (long) can also be configureated to be activated by the DCC Function buttons (F1 and F2) if the F1 and F2 activate Bell and Horn? preference is set.
See In Phone Loco Sounds (IPLS) for details on how to activate and us the In Phone Loco sounds.
Custom .ipls Files
You can add custom IPLS files in the ../Android/data/jmri.enginedriver/files/ folder of you android device. They will appear in the list of profiles that can be selected in the Throttle 1 Loco Sounds or Throttle 2 Loco Sounds preferences.
To create a custom .ipls you need to have at least the following files:
an .ipls file (which is a text file of instructions that you create)
an engine idle sound
at least one engine running sound (up to 16)
Optionally you can also have:
An Engine start-up sound
Bell sounds
Horn/Whistle sounds
In the case of the Bell and Horn/Whistle sounds you can optionally include start-up and end sounds.
The .ipls file, which you will need to create, includes the instructions on which sounds to use in which circumstances, along with the name for this .ipls that will appear in the drop down lists.
.ipls File Format
The first character of each line is the instruction/sound type.
Lines starting with “/” are comments.
Avoid additional spaces i.e don’t put a space before or after the colon. (ED will try to trim any leading and trailing spaces, but best to avoid them.)
n: - Mandatory = name that will appear in the drop lists in Engine Driver
b0: - Optional = Bell start sound (optional even if the b1: sound is included)
b1: - Optional = Bell loop sound
b2: - Optional = Bell end sound (optional even if the b1: sound is included)
h0: - Optional = Horn/Whistle start sound (optional even if the h1: sound is included)
h1: - Optional = Horn/Whistle loop sound
h2: - Optional = Horn/Whistle end sound (optional even if the h1: sound is included)
h+: - Optional = short horn / whistle
l0: - Mandatory = Loco idle
l1: - Mandatory = loco running, low speed
l2: - Optional = loco running, next speed
l3: - Optional = loco running, etc.
..
l15: - Optional = loco running, etc.
l16: - Optional = loco running, etc.
Maximum of 16 steps
Not all 16 are required, but there must not be any missing steps between 0 and the last provided step
l+: - Optional = Loco Start-up Sound MAX 12 seconds
Sounds files can be .wav or .mp3 format. Other formats may usable but are untested.
Each sound is internally limited to one megabyte storage, which represents approximately 5.6 seconds at 44.1kHz stereo, however all sounds have a time limit maximum of approximately 12 seconds.
By default, the sound files are expected to be in ../Android/data/jmri.enginedriver/files/ (i.e the same folder the .ips file is in) however you can put them in subfolders by prepending the sound file name with <folder name><forward slash>.
e.g. sample/bell_start.mp3 - will look for ../Android/jmri.enginedriver/files/sample/bell_start.mp3
Sample .ipls
The sample files are available here as a compressed zip file. To use it extract the files, including the subfolder to ../Android/data/jmri.enginedriver/files/ on your Android device.
/ sample custom 'In-Phone Loco Sounds' (.ipls) file
/
/ - the first character of each line is the instruction/sound type
/ - Lines starting with "/" are comments
/ - Avoid additional spaces (it will try to trim leading and trailing spaces)
/ i.e don't put a space before or after the colon.
/ - this .ipls file MUST be placed in ../Android/data/jmri.enginedriver/files/
/ - By default, the sound files are expected to be in ../Android/data/jmri.enginedriver/files/
/ however you can put them in subfolders by prepending the sound file name with <folder name><forward slash>
/ e.g. sample/bell_start.mp3 - will look for ../Android/jmri.enginedriver/files/sample/bell_start.mp3
/ - The files used for the inbuilt sounds can be copied from here: https://github.com/flash62au/EngineDriver/tree/master/EngineDriver/src/main/res/raw
/ - Sounds files can be .wav or .mp3 format. Other formats may usable but are untested.
/ - Each sound is internally limited to one megabyte storage, which represents approximately 5.6 seconds at 44.1kHz stereo
/
/ n: = name that will appear in the drop lists in Engine Driver
/
n:Diesel Loco - 4 steps
/
/ b0: Bell start sound b1: Bell loop sound b2: Bell end sound
/
b0:sample/bell_start.mp3
b1:sample/bell_loop.mp3
b2:sample/bell_end.mp3
/
/ h0: Horn/Whistle start sound h1: Horn/Whistle loop sound h2: Horn/Whistle end sound
/
h0:sample/horn_start.mp3
h1:sample/horn_loop.mp3
h2:sample/horn_end.mp3
/
/ h+: short horn / whistle
/
h+:sample/SD40_NathanP3_Short.wav
/
/ l0: Loco idle l1:.. l16: Loco steps/notches
/ - MAX 16
/ - Not all 16 are required, but there must not be any missing steps between 0 and the last
/
l0:sample/diesel_645turbo_idle.mp3
l1:sample/diesel_645turbo_d1k.wav
l2:sample/diesel_645turbo_d2.wav
l3:sample/diesel_645turbo_d3.wav
l4:sample/diesel_645turbo_d4.mp3
/
/ l+: Loco Startup Sound MAX 12 seconds
/
l+:sample/diesel_645turbo_start.mp3
Sourcing sound files to use in custom .ipls
Sourcing suitable sound files can be difficult. Sounds files for decoders can generally be converted to a suitable format, but as these are usually proprietary in nature so I advise against doing so unless they are clearly open source.
Zimo has a large collection of sound files, many of which are described as ‘Free’ (the ones with .zip files), which are suitable to be used to create .ipls, though the legalities of doing so for this purpose are unclear.