How It Was Built

How OpenShaker was built

From "half the time the software doesn't work" to a one-click installer: every problem we ran into, what we found, and how we fixed it.

About this page

OpenShaker is a small Windows app that waits in the notification area (the tray). It reads live data from racing games and turns it into low-frequency sound for a bass shaker such as the ButtKicker. It was built to replace HaptiConnect, the ButtKicker's own software.

"We" means the maintainer and Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic. The maintainer set the goals, sat in the chair for every test, felt every change and made every decision. Claude read logs and program files, measured recordings, wrote the code and the tests, and explained each step. This page follows the same transparency promise as the README, so it has a section on when the AI got it wrong, too.

The maintainer asked for this page: a document that would "outline all the reasoning and work we did to fix my issues". When the project first went public, the request was already there: "Describe the projects and how it was accomplished."

Where the rest lives. The README is the short version. HOW_IT_WAS_TUNED.md tells the tuning story with spectrograms and numbers, so the tuning chapter here is short on purpose. CALIBRATION.md has the measurements, DEVELOPMENT.md explains the code, and the OpenShaker guide explains the app itself: its features, effects, each game and its setup, troubleshooting and safety.

How to read it. Each problem is a short entry: Problem, then What we found, then Fix. Quotes are the maintainer's own words, with the spelling tidied, unless they are marked as Claude's. All dates are in September 2026.

Contents

• When it happened
• Part 1: why OpenShaker exists
• Part 2: how we worked, including when the AI got it wrong
• Part 3: the problems, chapter by chapter
  • Chapter 1: getting games to talk
  • Chapter 2: a dependable everyday app
  • Chapter 3: sound and safety
  • Chapter 4: matching HaptiConnect, the short version
  • Chapter 5: making it shareable
• Part 4: what is still open
• Glossary
• Tell us how it feels

When it happened

When	What happened
September 10, evening	The maintainer's opening complaint. HaptiConnect is diagnosed: it forgets the shaker, it looks for Assetto Corsa EVO under old names, and it has no Forza Horizon 6 plugin. The first OpenShaker build ships the same evening, with a window and a desktop shortcut. Measuring HaptiConnect starts, and the first live Forza Motorsport and Assetto Corsa EVO drives follow. The goal: "as close as HaptiConnect".
September 11	The window is audited, and an AI overclaim is corrected. The tray app, haptics that are always on, the test-tone bug, the stray command window, BeamNG's idle shaking, per-game presets, and separate Forza Horizon 5 and 6 presets.
September 12	Forwarding to HaptiConnect is dropped. Trackmania support is built. The BeamNG pedal bug is fixed, and the decision against game mods leads to BeamNG's built-in Motion Sim output. The decision to go public: the name, the license, the first installer, and no recorded HaptiConnect audio in the app.
September 18	HaptiConnect's saved device goes stale again. A pre-publish audit. The drive-and-compare loop with HaptiConnect starts. The first felt Trackmania drives. Assetto Corsa EVO is replayed into HaptiConnect's own ACE plugin. The first Forza Horizon 6 reference. The exact-parity decision. A "Haptics on" switch. Tests may no longer touch the real system. The release is paused for more changes.
September 19-20	A parity audit finds OpenShaker up to 6 dB too strong (a channel bug) and missing HaptiConnect's limiter. "Yes to all": the exact-parity profiles and the fix list are applied, and left-only output is confirmed on the device.
September 22	HaptiConnect's own dropouts are measured and left out of every comparison.
September 27	The release is back on: the one-screen installer, a privacy scan, the tuning write-up with new spectrograms, HaptiConnect's timing measured, and the request for this page.

---

---

Contents | Part 1: why OpenShaker exists ->