Poi Mirror

Show playpoi.com/poi-mirror on recordings

Square suits social media and the circle you spin in. App sounds are the strings, metronome and chimes. With the microphone, music playing in the room is recorded too (it also hears the strings from the speakers). Recordings save to your downloads, named by date and time.

Show trails Trail length

Light threshold

Poi heads only Largest light

Bridge gaps between frames Smooth

Trails follow bright lights, so LED poi in a dim room work best. Raise Light threshold until only your poi leave trails, or tick Auto. Ignore still lights skips lamps and windows; Poi heads only skips broad bright patches like walls and faces (lower Largest light if they still get trails). Bridge gaps joins fast poi into lines; Smooth softens them.

Background

Size

Poi length (% of arm)

Spin extensions (poi in line with your arm) and the app sets the centre, Size and, with an LED handle, Poi length to match you.

Drag on the video to move the centre point.

Shapes follow the Size and Poi length settings. Inspins go from 1 and antispins from 3: both are two-circle patterns. At 0° a petal tip points straight up; an inspin's petal is its inner loop. Rotation offers only the angles that put extensions or inswings on the directions. Dots: large at the extensions, small at the inswings (where the poi passes the arm), a ring at the middle of each petal or loop.

Tempo

Volume

Accented beats click louder and flash brighter. To accent the diagonals with all eight directions, set Beat 1 at a diagonal. In 3/4 with all eight, the accent moves round, alternating cardinal and diagonal. If flashes land before the click you hear, which is common with Bluetooth speakers, move Flash timing to the right.

Accuracy feedback 1. Calibrate: extension circles2. Patterns: extensions and inswings

Calibration tolerance

Target window

Glow at the screen edge

For one LED poi in a dim room. The poi is found with the Light threshold under Trails; a small ring marks where the app sees it. Feedback follows the live picture, so set Replay delay to off while using it.

Play the directions as strings

Music playing in the room? Press Listen, and the strings move to its key once it has held steady for a few seconds (about 6–10 s). Listening pauses while the strings play, so at a new song, pause for a few seconds and the strings follow. Uses the microphone; nothing is recorded or sent.

Strike window

Fast strikes an octave up Fast above

Speed is how fast your hand circles (turns per second); your last strike's speed shows here, to help set the threshold.

Room echo

String volume

Two moments can pluck: the inswing, when the poi passes the arm (the tip of an inspin's inner loop, the middle of an antispin's inner arc), and the extension, when the poi is in line with the arm. Each one plays the direction nearest the arm at that moment, so each strikes one string. A moment further than the strike window from every direction plays nothing. Notes rise clockwise from the top. With two poi, each one plucks on its own around the same centre, so two strings can sound at once. For one LED poi in a dim room; the poi is found with the Light threshold under Trails, and a small ring marks where the app sees it. Set Replay delay to off while playing.

Mirror on and off Mirror on

Mirror off

The mirror shows your petals; only your poi in the air show your planes and what your hand and wrist are doing. Switch between the two: the mirror fades for a while and you watch your poi directly. Strings and the metronome keep playing, so you still hear whether you're hitting the directions. A soft chime marks each change.

Replay delay

Minutes on each shape

A routine sets Shape 1 and turns Shape 2 off. The progression: 8 inspins; 4 inspins on the cardinals, then the diagonals; 2 inspins vertical, horizontal and on each diagonal; 8 antispins; 4 antispins on the cardinals, then the diagonals; 6 antispins vertical, then horizontal; then the triquetra pointing up, right, down and left. Random shuffles the same shapes. A chime marks each change.

Zoom

Pan left / right

Pan down / up

Side-on: stand sideways and spin wheel-plane patterns facing the camera. The screen shows two copies of you, one mirrored and one not, so forward spins turn toward the middle and backward spins away; Swap sides if it's the other way round. Everything else works as usual. Set the centre point in the normal view.

Plane check

For plane check, circle the poi around a still hand, facing the camera. The app fits an oval to the circle and shows how flat it is to the camera. Use plain circles: in flowers, gravity and the pattern itself squash petals for other reasons.

Zoom crops the picture, so you can stand the camera further away; distance is what evens out near and far arms. ×2 on a phone's main lens is about a 50 mm view. 4K keeps a zoomed picture sharper, if the camera offers it (see the status line).