DEBUG BUILD · SIDELOAD

Timefield

Experimental slit-scan temporal camera. Private test build for on-device evaluation.

Pushed to site: 2026-07-18 19:12 -07:00

Download APK Android 8.0+ · camera-only · fully local

build 8ae624b · 2026-07-18 · minSdk 26

What’s new — Motion smoothing: ease the slit's drag and rotate

Installing

  1. Tap Download APK.
  2. Open it from the download notification or Files.
  3. Allow installs from this app when prompted, then Install.
  4. Play Protect may warn about a sideloaded app — expected for a debug build; choose “install anyway”.

Grant camera permission on first launch. No network — nothing leaves the phone.

Release history

Sonification: hear your scan as sound (+ new app icon)

build e81eb8f · 2026-07-18 · pushed 2026-07-18 18:25 -07:00

  • BIG NEW FEATURE: SONIFICATION, turn your scan into SOUND. Finish a scan, then tap the new Play button (bottom row) to HEAR your slit-scan as music: the image is read like a spectrogram (one axis time, the other pitch), brightness = loudness, red/green = left/right. It is an offline v1: play or export a FINISHED scan (live-while-scanning is a future version).
  • SOUND CONTROLS (settings gear -> Sound): Pitch range + a Pitch transpose slider, Scale (continuous / chromatic / pentatonic / harmonic series), Amplitude (Gamma + Gate), Playback speed, Stereo width, Score orientation, and an Effects group with Delay + Reverb.
  • PLEASE TUNE BY EAR: the Gamma and Gate are the make-or-break controls, photos are dense (grey everywhere) so without them every scan is an undifferentiated drone. The defaults are guesses; nudging Gamma up and the Gate off the floor is what turns it from a hairdryer into music. Tell me what defaults feel right.
  • EXPORT: the Export WAV button (in the Sound settings) saves the audio to Music/Timefield.
  • PLEASE CHECK PERFORMANCE on your real phone: on the slow test emulator, playback stuttered and exporting ~10s of audio took ~54s (a 128-voice synth is heavy for the emulator's x86 CPU). On your ARM phone it should be much faster, but if playback is not smooth or export is slow, tell me and I will optimize.
  • NEW APP ICON: Timefield now has a real launcher icon (time-slices tapering around a bright scan front, indigo to lavender) instead of the default Android robot. The download page has a matching favicon too.

Shaped-slit extras: center swell, mirrored ripples, breathing pulse

build b3cb41d · 2026-07-18 · pushed 2026-07-18 16:40 -07:00

  • NEW shaped-slit controls (in the settings gear under 'Slit shape', shown when a wave is active): Edge falloff, Mirrored, and Pulse. All OFF by default, so your existing shapes are unchanged.
  • EDGE FALLOFF: makes the wave swell in the MIDDLE and taper toward straight at the line ends (0 = even amplitude, 1 = full center swell).
  • MIRRORED: makes the wave symmetric about the center. Combined with Wave speed, the ripples emanate OUTWARD from the center to both edges; a negative Wave speed converges them inward; Wave speed 0 gives a static symmetric shape.
  • PULSE: the wave 'breathes' in place, its amplitude swelling and shrinking over time. This is separate from Wave speed's travel, so you can have a wave that BOTH travels AND breathes.
  • Try combining them: center swell + mirrored + a slow pulse = a breathing ripple emanating from the middle. Best on a moving subject. All three apply to bounded Classic/Outward only (greyed on Inward and infinity, like the other shape controls).

Live framing overlay: ghost the live camera over your scan

build a36c19c · 2026-07-18 · pushed 2026-07-18 15:40 -07:00

  • NEW Framing overlay (in the settings gear): a 'Live view' opacity slider that ghosts the LIVE camera over your accumulated scan on the preview, so you can see where the scene is right now relative to what you have already captured. Slide it up to reveal the live camera as a translucent overlay; 0 = off.
  • It is PREVIEW-ONLY: the ghost never appears in saved stills or recorded video (this is enforced structurally). Please confirm on your phone: record a video / save a still with the overlay up and check the output is clean.
  • Use it to line up a moving subject against your existing capture, or to reframe mid-scan without losing your place.
  • Heads-up: the visual look (how the ghost reads at ~50%, and over a scrolling infinity/slide scan) could not be auto-checked (the test emulator was overloaded), so your eyes on a real phone are the check here. Both cameras.

Shaped and animated slit: waves and zig-zags

build e35bf48 · 2026-07-18 · pushed 2026-07-18 15:14 -07:00

  • NEW: the slit can be a WAVE or ZIG-ZAG instead of a straight line. In the settings gear open 'Slit shape': pick Sine or Zig-zag, then dial Depth (wave amplitude), Cycles (waves along the line), and Wave speed (animate it: the wave travels along the slit; 0 = frozen, negative = travels the other way).
  • The scan-line overlay draws the wave shape live, so you can see what you are drawing with as you tune it.
  • PLEASE TRY: a moving wave (raise Wave speed) on a moving subject, the interplay of the animated slit with scene motion is the fun part. And try it at an ANGLE (two-finger rotate the line) plus on both cameras, since the emulator cannot test rotated/angled cases.
  • Works on bounded Classic and Outward. It is intentionally OFF for Inward and for the infinity (continuous) modes for now, the wave-meets-ring-seam interaction needs more design work; selecting those greys out and clears the shape.
  • Please give these a quick try on your phone (an overloaded test emulator could not auto-verify them): save a PRESET of a shaped scan then re-apply it, save a shaped STILL, and rotate the line mid shaped-scan.
  • This is the smooth analytic wave. A future update adds a physical whippy-string wave you can flick.

Continuous Modes: infinity toggle + background lock/slide

build 47bae1c · 2026-07-18 · pushed 2026-07-18 13:14 -07:00

  • NEW: the infinity button (left of the mode glyph) makes ANY mode perpetual. Infinity on Classic = the endless scroll you saw before. Infinity on Outward is new: the image emanates continuously outward from the line in BOTH directions at once (two strip-charts sharing a center pen).
  • PLEASE TRY ANGLED, this is the case the emulator cannot test so your eyes are the check: rotate the line with two fingers before/while scanning in an infinity mode. The outward half-rings AND the lock/slide should follow the tilt cleanly. Both cameras.
  • NEW Slide/Lock toggle (appears only in infinity mode): SLIDE (default) = the background moves/rotates when you move the slit, like before. LOCK = the background stays put on screen and you draw over it in place (oscilloscope style). Flip it live mid-scan. Lock is handy for repositioning the slit without the whole image sliding around.
  • Inward + infinity is intentionally DISABLED for now, still figuring out whether two streams colliding at the center reads as an intentional visual or just a seam down the middle. Under investigation.
  • Scroll is no longer its own mode, it is now Classic + infinity. Any old scroll presets migrate automatically.

Continuous Scroll — perpetual strip-chart mode

build c96b4e7 · 2026-07-18 · pushed 2026-07-18 10:51 -07:00

  • NEW SCROLL MODE: the scan never ends — it scrolls forever like a strip-chart / seismograph. Cycle the mode glyph to the scroll icon (a short dash trailing a right arrow — it's the 4th mode, after Classic / Outward / Inward). Content keeps flowing past the slit indefinitely instead of filling once and freezing.

UI redesign v3 + combined move/rotate gesture + save-still fix

build dd7d330 · 2026-07-18 · pushed 2026-07-18 09:45 -07:00

  • GESTURE: two fingers now MOVE and ROTATE the line at the same time (before, two fingers only rotated). One finger still just drags. Give it a try — twist and slide together.
  • FIX: the Save-still (download) button now works whenever there's a scan on screen — running, paused, or finished. Before it only lit up on a fully-completed scan, so on Loop/Ping-pong (which never 'finish') or a paused scan you couldn't save at all.
  • BOTTOM CLUSTER is now TWO ROWS matching your mockup: TOP row = mode · half-size PLAY (centered) · lock; BOTTOM row = reset · save-still · record-video (red) · flip, with the two capture buttons in the middle.
  • EDGE FADERS now show a NUMBER by the knob — speed shows the scan duration (e.g. "~10 s"), slit shows its value (e.g. "0.010"). Tap the side arrows to reveal them (speed left / slit right).
  • Lock moved down next to the play button; Presets moved up top-right next to the gear. Mode is glyph-only (no caption), per your mockup.
  • SETTINGS (gear): the pickers explain themselves — Compositing / Completion / Rotation are full rows with a one-line description each; canvas resolution is chips.
  • NOTE: on your phone, re-download this build (timefield-784ee4a.apk) from this page — a previous install won't auto-update. Tell me what to tune next (fader look, where the unlinked 2nd speed should live, icon sizes).

Milestone 4b — Presets, pause & canvas resolution (MVP complete)

build 3c4f79d · 2026-07-18 · pushed 2026-07-18 00:05 -07:00

  • FIX: the settings GEAR (bottom-right of the button row) could be pushed off-screen on some phones — the row now wraps so the gear is always visible. Tap it for Rotation / Source / compositing / completion / smoothing / canvas resolution.
  • MVP complete — this milestone adds pause, presets, and canvas resolution.
  • PAUSE/STOP: tap the scan button mid-scan to pause, tap again to resume; hold it to stop (a paused scan freezes until you resume).
  • PRESETS (new Presets button): 8 built-in starting points, each with a one-line scene hint on first use. Save your current setup as a preset; rename / duplicate / delete / reorder your own; export & import presets as files.
  • CANVAS RESOLUTION (in the settings gear): choose Match input / 540p / 720p / 1080p — your saved still is rendered at the chosen resolution, independent of the camera feed.
  • ROTATION now defaults to Rewrite: a mid-scan twist of the line continues smoothly instead of jumping (Strict / Wedge-fill still selectable in settings).
  • BLEND MODES: Darken and Difference now render correctly on a single pass (no more black wall), and blend mode is switchable live, mid-scan.
  • Please eyeball on your phone: the two-finger twist look under Rewrite vs Wedge-fill, and that resume after a pause finishes the scan.

Preview — live blend modes + Darken fix

build 6415d89 · 2026-07-17 · pushed 2026-07-17 21:55 -07:00

  • Blend modes now render correctly on a single pass — Darken and Difference no longer come out solid black.
  • You can switch blend mode live, mid-scan, from the settings gear.
  • Preview build from in-progress work — tap-to-pause, saved presets, and canvas-resolution options are still landing.

Portrait fix + settings gear + version

build b039d9c · 2026-07-17 · pushed 2026-07-17 19:05 -07:00

  • PORTRAIT ORIENTATION FIX — the sideways/stretched image in portrait should now be upright and correct on both cameras (front is selfie-mirrored). Please verify — this needs your eyes.
  • Settings is now a GEAR icon instead of the easy-to-miss "More" word — that is where Rotation (try Rewrite!), Source, compositing, completion & smoothing live.
  • In-app build version now shown at the bottom of the settings panel, so you can always confirm which build you are on (it matches the build hash on this page).
  • If portrait still looks wrong, the diagnostic is: adb logcat -s TimefieldProcessor

Milestone 4a — Instrument dynamics

build 0bb86d6 · 2026-07-17 · pushed 2026-07-17 18:03 -07:00

  • Blend modes: alpha, lighten, darken, difference (they act across passes — pair with Loop or Ping-pong)
  • Change speed and slit width live, mid-scan
  • Completion behaviors: reverse, ping-pong, loop-repeat
  • Inward collapse mode (fronts meet at the centre)
  • Rotation options: Rewrite (fronts continue, no jump) and Wedge-fill
  • Optional smoothing to soften live changes
  • Stop button + a collapsible parameter panel (More)

Milestone 3 — Capture

build 1ebf5f2 · 2026-07-17 · pushed 2026-07-17 ~14:15 PDT

  • Save stills (JPEG/PNG) to Pictures/Timefield, overlay-free
  • Record video to Movies/Timefield (on-screen UI is not in the recording)
  • Front / rear camera switch
  • Tap to focus
  • Exposure (EV) slider
  • A finished scan survives camera switch/backgrounding so you can still save it

Milestone 2 — Outward engine

build 0a8cf3b · 2026-07-17 · pushed 2026-07-17 ~12:31 PDT

  • Outward scan from a draggable/rotatable line
  • Classic/Outward + Mirrored/Split source modes
  • Linked/independent speeds
  • Angled lines
  • Twist the line mid-scan