The a-pipes can wirelessly play over Radio with the a-box. It can also play over bluetooth but latency is too high, except for beginers.

So, why not building a special WIFI a-pipes: the _wapipes ?

This devices embed only optical feature, WIFI and a LIPO battery rechargeable over USB. No sound, no jack aboard : all sounds are remotely played by the piper's PC, Mac or smartphone.

I love this idea, so modern, especially when involving smartphones !

During automn 2020, a prototype has been set up and the remote software has been adapted to it. Result is great. The wa-pipes acts as a hotspot WIFI access point. The computer simply connects to this confidential network. Once connected, latency is very low and the instrument is cool to be played.

But WIFI draws a lot of full and battery time life is very short: no more than 4 hours.

The worse comes when connecting to an Android smartphone. This operating system has no realtime skills. Latency is variable and very high. Sometimes one second ...

Before hanging up with this project, I had a look on IPhone devices. Unfortunately the situation is exactly the same: impossible to play a tune.

R.I.P. little wa-pipes