https://www.sc-trainer.com
Hi everyone!
I'm a long time casual speedcuber (averaging a bit over 20 seconds), and have always really enjoyed the hobby. I also loved seeing this really awesome community expand from afar, with the amazing Youtube channels that have come up over the last years and cool videos sharing the awesome atmosphere at competitions. Now there's even a Netflix documentary!
I had an idea for a new approach to an algorithm trainer a few years ago though, and being a software engineer by trade I tinkered a bit with a low quality prototype for my own use in my spare-time. I have recently been blessed with the chance to work full time on whatever projects I'd like for some time though, and decided to give this idea a shot, and I just finished a high quality minimum version of what I'd envisioned! It's available at https://www.sc-trainer.com, and is designed to work well on all devices, computers/tablets/smartphones.
A little preview:
Before I explain a bit more about the idea behind it, I just wanted to ask you if you would take the time to try it out and provide me with some feedback? I have both included "Give feedback" buttons in between algorithm tests which link to a Google Form, but I'm also happy to receive any feedback or discussions about the potential of the app here in replies. I'd also love to hear if I've missed similar tools that already exist that do what I want to create, as I don't know of any right now!
So my overall goals with this web app is to make algorithm practice have more flow, be more efficient, maybe also a bit more gamified/fun, and also give you more insights into your strengths and weaknesses, through better data than current tools allow. As of this early version it is mostly (hopefully) satisfying the flow part, and is basically a full revision tool for PLL with 2-sided recognition, as it only has the single mode of reviewing all algorithms from all angles.
My main innovation (at least as far as I know it's an innovation), is to attempt to remove the scrambling phase from algorithm trainers which is the only method I currently know of. Instead of scrambling before every new algorithm to make your cube show the case, you instead start with a solved cube, see the case on screen, apply the moves to the cube that would solve the case on the screen, and then verify that your cube looks as it should (the expected look is shown to you). If you got it correct you can just continue straight on without applying any moves to your cube. If you got it wrong, you will have to apply moves though, to solve your cube again, as the app no longer knows the state of your cube. I don't see a good solution to this without integrating with bluetooth cubes which I don't imagine supporting anytime soon. However, I do have soon coming solutions for intelligently ordering algorithms that should avoid giving cases you're not ready to try yet, which I'll explain more about in the next paragraphs. This should help minimize the amount of wrongs. In addition, when you know the whole alg set, and are just practicing to improve your recognition + execution time, then incorrect applications should be infrequent, thereby allowing for much more flow than the usual method of scrambling before every case.
I believe this new approach allows for several nice improvements to algorithm practice:
I want to add a spaced repetition algorithm to the app. This will basically allow the software to track your current knowledge and skill at all the cases, and intelligently choose which ones to show you, to optimize your learning. When you still don't know all the cases, it'll make sure to limit how many weak cases are in the rotation at any given time, so you don't get overwhelmed with new cases, and automatically add in new ones as you learn more, while intelligently giving you old ones to revise when it's optimal for retention. When you know all the cases it will then help you practice your weaker/slower cases more often, to boost your overall ability at the algorithm set.
This is the feature that will make it a web app I'm really excited to use, and will hopefully be very helpful to myself and many others. The reason I'm already sharing it here now though, is to get some feedback in case I made some wrong assumptions about how helpful this type of tool could be, as I believe the current state of it makes the potential quite clear, even if it isn't fully featured yet. With this I hopefully won't go blindly down the wrong path of features.
Lastly, some other features I dream of making in the future are:
If you made it this far then thank you a lot for reading through all my thoughts and dreams for what speedcubing practice tools could achieve, and I hope you'll give my app a test-drive and provide me some good feedback!
And here it is once again: https://www.sc-trainer.com
Hi everyone!
I'm a long time casual speedcuber (averaging a bit over 20 seconds), and have always really enjoyed the hobby. I also loved seeing this really awesome community expand from afar, with the amazing Youtube channels that have come up over the last years and cool videos sharing the awesome atmosphere at competitions. Now there's even a Netflix documentary!
I had an idea for a new approach to an algorithm trainer a few years ago though, and being a software engineer by trade I tinkered a bit with a low quality prototype for my own use in my spare-time. I have recently been blessed with the chance to work full time on whatever projects I'd like for some time though, and decided to give this idea a shot, and I just finished a high quality minimum version of what I'd envisioned! It's available at https://www.sc-trainer.com, and is designed to work well on all devices, computers/tablets/smartphones.
A little preview:
Before I explain a bit more about the idea behind it, I just wanted to ask you if you would take the time to try it out and provide me with some feedback? I have both included "Give feedback" buttons in between algorithm tests which link to a Google Form, but I'm also happy to receive any feedback or discussions about the potential of the app here in replies. I'd also love to hear if I've missed similar tools that already exist that do what I want to create, as I don't know of any right now!
So my overall goals with this web app is to make algorithm practice have more flow, be more efficient, maybe also a bit more gamified/fun, and also give you more insights into your strengths and weaknesses, through better data than current tools allow. As of this early version it is mostly (hopefully) satisfying the flow part, and is basically a full revision tool for PLL with 2-sided recognition, as it only has the single mode of reviewing all algorithms from all angles.
My main innovation (at least as far as I know it's an innovation), is to attempt to remove the scrambling phase from algorithm trainers which is the only method I currently know of. Instead of scrambling before every new algorithm to make your cube show the case, you instead start with a solved cube, see the case on screen, apply the moves to the cube that would solve the case on the screen, and then verify that your cube looks as it should (the expected look is shown to you). If you got it correct you can just continue straight on without applying any moves to your cube. If you got it wrong, you will have to apply moves though, to solve your cube again, as the app no longer knows the state of your cube. I don't see a good solution to this without integrating with bluetooth cubes which I don't imagine supporting anytime soon. However, I do have soon coming solutions for intelligently ordering algorithms that should avoid giving cases you're not ready to try yet, which I'll explain more about in the next paragraphs. This should help minimize the amount of wrongs. In addition, when you know the whole alg set, and are just practicing to improve your recognition + execution time, then incorrect applications should be infrequent, thereby allowing for much more flow than the usual method of scrambling before every case.
I believe this new approach allows for several nice improvements to algorithm practice:
- As already mentioned it allows for a lot more flow when practicing alg sets you infrequently get wrong, with the goal of gaining speed
- It accurately times your recognition time, which is a more complete data point as this is an important factor in a real solve. You can of course look away while scrambling with a traditional alg trainer, and start the time before looking, but here it is forced
- It forces you to include pre-AUF and post-AUF in your time, and the trainer deliberately randomizes between all the AUF combinations, this will currently allow you to notice any outliers that need more practice, and has big future potential for data-driven insights.
- It incentivizes you to improve at quickly predicting all the AUFs without any U-moves or cube rotations, and executing them fluently together with the algorithm as it impacts your time
I want to add a spaced repetition algorithm to the app. This will basically allow the software to track your current knowledge and skill at all the cases, and intelligently choose which ones to show you, to optimize your learning. When you still don't know all the cases, it'll make sure to limit how many weak cases are in the rotation at any given time, so you don't get overwhelmed with new cases, and automatically add in new ones as you learn more, while intelligently giving you old ones to revise when it's optimal for retention. When you know all the cases it will then help you practice your weaker/slower cases more often, to boost your overall ability at the algorithm set.
This is the feature that will make it a web app I'm really excited to use, and will hopefully be very helpful to myself and many others. The reason I'm already sharing it here now though, is to get some feedback in case I made some wrong assumptions about how helpful this type of tool could be, as I believe the current state of it makes the potential quite clear, even if it isn't fully featured yet. With this I hopefully won't go blindly down the wrong path of features.
Lastly, some other features I dream of making in the future are:
- More algorithm sets should be easy. Including OLL, maybe COLL/EG-1/EG-2 for 2x2, or different Roux sets. One could also do advanced sets like Winter Variation / ZBLL etc.
- I am quite interested in improving from my current very rookie level in blindfolded solving, so am excited to hopefully make tools for that to both practice and really improve recall on letter pairs, improving tracing, and also a 3-style trainer
- Provide detailed statistics of your strengths and weaknesses in different algorithm sets. Highlighting things like weak algorithms, but also weak AUF combinations etc.
- Otherwise I'm super excited, though it may be a bit of time before I can get there, to do some quite advanced practice tools, surrounding F2L and Cross(+1). I have some vague ideas for how one could make an F2L trainer, to not only practice cases, but also different tools to help with improving lookahead. For the cross I'm really excited to create a cube solver that takes into account ergonomics (how easy the execution/finger tricks is) kind of similar to the algorithm JPerm created to evaluate how good an algorithm is. So it wouldn't just solve for shortest move sequence, but it would be able to intelligently guide you to speed-optimal solutions, and maybe also be able to take into account human-spottable patterns in inspection, such as blocks, and teaching you how to take advantage of those. In all these tools I'm very motivated to find more human-friendly software-assisted practice methods.
- All of the above is a massive amount of work, but in a dream scenario where this gets a lot of traction and I can maybe also get help from other software engineers, I also have fun ideas like creating badges/achievements (you learned full PLL / You average under 2 seconds for PLL! etc.), creating some social features, that could maybe mimick what Strava is to runners/cyclists/triathletes, maybe create leaderboards for the different training tools, maybe crunch the algorithmic data from users to calculate what the best algorithms / finger-tricks are for different algorithm sets, and many other fun ideas . That's all very far fetched though haha!
If you made it this far then thank you a lot for reading through all my thoughts and dreams for what speedcubing practice tools could achieve, and I hope you'll give my app a test-drive and provide me some good feedback!
And here it is once again: https://www.sc-trainer.com