Blog and News

Hello! This is somewhat of a unique newsletter, as I’m extremely excited to be guest writing to tell you about new developments and upcoming features coming to all the Tail Co app-controlled products – especially for those who haven’t had the opportunity to hear about them through the Telegram groups where they get actively discussed.

By way of introduction, I am David “Dark Grue” Hesprich, and I’ve been involved since joining the original Ear Gear Kickstarter that was launched in July of 2019. I joined the Telegram group for backers, happened to have some manufacturing design info at my fingertips that was of use to Master Tailer… and it was all downhill from there! 😆 Since that time, I’ve been helping with the Telegram groups to provide support (and hopefully humorous entertainment), established the repair depot for Tail Co products for the Americas, maintain the product firmware and technical documentation, and just provide all sorts of consulting support to the business. It’s been a great time for me in terms of opportunity, and I really enjoy working with Master Tailer and the Tailer community.

The big news from me for this newsletter is the announcement of the new unified firmware system for the entire Tail Co app-controlled product line, TailCoNTROL! The first release of this firmware will be for MiTail, FlutterWings, and MiTail Mini, and has greatly expanded the move control and design features.

One of the very first firmware development projects I was involved in for The Tail Company was adding servo easing to the movement of MiTail. Servo easing is a technique used to improve the smoothness of the movement of servo motors. It is achieved by using a mathematical algorithm to adjust the acceleration and deceleration of the servo motor as it moves between two positions. This helps create a smoother, more natural motion and can help reduce motor noise and wear. I’ve gotten a lot of feedback personally from customers that noticed when that change went out to production, and they have really noticed the difference.

Now, both the internal move definitions as well as user-defined moves have been greatly expanded in fine-grain control. Previously, servo easing was global, now it can be set per-servo, per-step. The servos also run independently. Previously, servo moves on both servos ran the same duration – which was entirely appropriate for the tail, but became less desirable for products like the FlutterWings where independent moves can produce really life-like effects.

The move system is also now on the servo easing library’s interrupt handling service instead of being serviced by a program loop. It makes for a much cleaner move system code, and should be much more efficient in using the microprocessor resources on the products, which leaves more time for them to do other things.

Lastly, the unified firmware allows us to roll out features and fixes across the entire product line quickly and consistently. As one might imagine, maintaining multiple disparate codebases is a nightmare and this brings all the products under the same umbrella. A better code maintenance situation for the Tail Co, and a much more consistent experience for the customers.

What about the EarGear 2? Well, TailCoNTROL is coming to ears as well! A proof-of-concept to move Ear Gear 2 to the unified firmware has been completed, and will be the next major firmware release project, bringing all the current features of the rest of the product line to the ears, as well as a much-needed update to the ear move system (including the servo easing.) But wait, theres more… ConFURence Mode.

The entire team, whether it’s Tail Co staff or community volunteers, seeks to make the best animatronics we can. And the quality of the firmware is indispensable to that. Faulty firmware can mar the customer experience, or in the worst case, put a tail out of commission, and to that end, we’re performing functional and security testing to make sure that the firmware is quality, and will work as expected, as well as characterize risks and hazards to drive development priorities.

Some may recall the incident at Midwest FurFest 2023. Many attendees reported severe business disruption with their Square payment readers, others described problems with Bluetooth-enabled hearing aids and heart rate monitoring tools. An attendee also tweeted that the Android device they used to control their insulin pump had been interfered with by a Bluetooth Low Energy spam attack and that had they not been able to recover their device, they would have needed emergency care. There’s no possible excuse for these kinds of attacks and misuse, as it quickly – and entirely predicably – went from anything remotely resembling a prank to assault. It’s sad, but it’s also a very poignant example of practical threat and risk analysis that I perform in my day job. Which brings us to ConFURence Mode (we're still workshopping the name).

The Bluetooth stack handling communications on the controller boards is a pretty popular open-source implementation and has shown to be extremely robust, but the Midwest FurFest attack has realized certain risks that we want to address in further enhancements to protect the gear against abuse. In an upcoming release, we’ll be adding more features to harden the unified firmware against hostile Bluetooth connections. It’s not physically possible to prevent broadband RF jamming or an otherwise crowded RF environment (although the spread-spectrum feature of Bluetooth itself helps mitigate that), but we can and will help prevent malicious attacks that can take the tail out of commission or grab control away from the owner. It’s unfortunate that it’s necessary, but it’s a significant way we continue to deliver value to customers past the point of purchase to ensure you enjoy your tail, ears, or wings!

The Tail Company has always been supportive of open-source where it can be, and a significant part of recent changes has been to give greater access to application code and documentation resources:

The creation of the OpenTails Github repository (https://github.com/OpenTails), to kick off the umbrella branding for application coding and other projects that work with The Tail Company products.

On the documentation and reference side, we have The Tail Company Library (https://docs.thetailcompany.com/), which brings together all the product documentation, developer documentation (such as the command protocols for communicating with the firmware), and product videos. The documentation and video guides have been greatly expanded as well.

The new wiki also showcases a new effort, which is to make self-repair options available to customers. The Service Notes for MiTail (https://docs.thetailcompany.com/doku.php?id=en:manuals:service-notes-for-mitail) has been released along with the availability of replacement parts through The Tail Company. This gives customers another option to maintain their tail in addition to the already available repair services. It’s also an invaluable resource for advanced modders looking to extend the functionality of their tail!

Getting to the broadest possible audience is part of the goal of creating openness, and language support supplies another part of the overall strategy. The Android application’s language support has reached 16 languages as a result of our volunteer customer translators and the enthusiastic direction of our community translation lead. Similarly, key parts of the wiki are available in English and German, with Czech and Spanish pending. Community Support

It’s important to mention where all this change is being driven from, and where the energy and effort is sourced – it’s the community of users! The Telegram user groups, which has expanded greatly to add both product development and translation support chats, is staffed entirely of volunteers from the community from all over the world. The new wiki was created by our community member, ToeiRei, who has done a great job reviewing code security and quality and also leads the application and wiki translation efforts. WolFi provides the merciless CrumpetBot, that keeps the Telegram user groups free of spammers and disruptions. Leinir is the Android Crumpet developer and community member who has donated countless amounts of time to features and supporting users. Code-L is developing his own app for iOS and Android which is also showing great promise. And lots of other people who support by participating: showing off their products, providing user-to-user support, feature feedback and testing, and more! Our volunteer moderators, who help with user-to-user support on the Telegram groups, and help keep things civil and welcoming deserve a mention: Birdy the Scottish Gryphon, Devin Neko, Izwe, Leinir, Talon Meosic, ToeiRei, WolFi, and yurei Kitsune.

And I want to give a special thanks to a new category of volunteers that stepped up to assist with the TailCoNTROL testing: Andrew Heien, Code-L the Big Floof, Dex, nocoffei, and ToeiRei. Thank you for the help and the patience!

Many new features and improvements have been the result of customer feedback and involvement, and OTA updates mean it’s only a button-press update away for all Tail Co customers to enjoy.

I hope everyone’s excited about the new features that they’ve seen go into the products over time, and what’s coming to make the products you already enjoy even better! It’s been my privilege and pleasure to work with The Tail Company and the tailer community, and I look forward to continue to do so.

Your Friendly Lurking Horror,
Dark Grue