Chastikey configuration

These are notes about how I configure Chastikey, the phone app that allows time control of a chastity lockup for self locking.

My objectives are:

* I want some control over the time - for instance, I wanted a lockup of about 7 to 10 days, and okay being a little outside that but not too far, so 2 days or 20 days would have been annoying

* I wanted to need to interact with it to have some engagement - if you just 'set and forget' until the time is up, there are other ways to do fixed time lockups like KitchenSafe

There are many ways you can set up Chastikey for all sorts of objectives. This is detail about the settings I use to meet those objectives, but if you have different objectives then you should use different settings.

These are the settings I use (in the order they're defined on the app):

* Lock for Myself

* Not a test lock

* No bot (see later)

* Variable lock

* Chance every 3 hours - not too often that it's distracting, not too infrequent that I forget all about it

* No cumulative chances - this means I can check every 3 hours but if I miss several chances, I don't get to catch up on them, the chance is lost. If I forget to check all day, that's effectively a whole day delay to unlocking, so requires regular involvement to get the lock closer to unlocking

* Number of digits - I use a digital safe which takes 8 digits

* Red card count (see later)

* Yellows - yes, adds a bit of variety

* Sticky cards - no, feels like they're very dangerous. Say your pack has 10 stickies, they never go away so you might end up with 1 green but still 10 stickies so could add several days to the lockup

* Freeze cards - yes

* Double up cards - no, they have too big an effect

* Reset cards - no, they have too big an effect

* Green cards - doesn't make a huge difference how many there are since it's quite likely that you'll be down to the last few cards before it unlocks, but 10-20 is good

* Multiple greens required to unlock - yes, or there's a higher risk of accidental early release

* Hide card information - yes, makes it more interesting

* Copies with fake combinations - yes, I really like this feature so run 1 real and 4 fakes. Great to watch a lock just about to be revealed but still not know if it's the real combination

* Auto reset - no

* Emergency release - that's up to you

So the choice of number of reds is complex so bear with me... 

Let's say you choose a "chance regularity" of 3 hours, non-cumulative. This means you need to check every 3 hours, and if you forget for a few days you don't get to do all the checks you missed, they're just lost. But realistically you're not going to check over night, so you get probably 6 checks in a day (9am, 12pm, 3pm, 6pm, 9pm, 12am). In other words, you will actually use 6 out of 8 of the check opportunities (3/4 of them).

But the app doesn't account for that, it thinks you'll do 8 checks a day. So when it gives an estimate of 10 days, it means 10*8=80 checks. Since you can only do 6 checks a day, it will take you just over 13 days to do that (80/6=13.33). So when the app estimates a number of days, multiply by 1.33 (4/3) to get the real number of days.

And there's two other factors that play in to this...

* The app has logic that says the 'random' pick of cards will never show a green if the minimum time (ie the time implied by the minimum number of reds in the range you specify) has not yet been met. For instance, if you specify the range of red cards you want as being between 80 and 160 red cards (check every 3 hours). It interprets that as the minimum time being 10 days, so will not show you a green card for the first 10 days. Note that we know 80 reds means minimum 13 days (see above) but the app doesn't consider that. This doesn't affect the release time, it's just very odd to not get any greens during the early lock time.

* For some reason, if the maxim and minimum number of red cards are the same (ie between 80 and 80) it interprets it that you meant between 1 and 80 (they tell me this is not a bug). Just avoid setting the maximum and minimum to the same values to avoid the confusion.

Both of those extra points are implied within the Chastikey help pages though I think not made as clear as they should be.

Do run the simulator several times to ensure the estimated time is within what you expect, but don't forget to multiply the estimate by 1.33 to get the true time!

Other points of interest:

* I first chose to use a bot and to 'hide updates'. The 'hide updates' means you get told that the bot has made a change but you don't know what the state was before or after so the bot update doesn't make much difference (I think I would prefer to know the bot has added reds even if I don't know how many there were before or after). And I found that when there were plenty of cards left, the bot offered to unlock the lock for me. I didn't want that, so kept denying its offer but it offered it every 3 hours. For both these reasons, I prefer not to use a bot.

* I use a digital safe with an 8 digit number, but one time I found myself remembering the combination - it was a month ago but I can still tell you it was 58583691. I realised I could remember it in part because I was reading the digits in pairs. Next time I did lockup I deliberately didn't read the combination on screen in pairs when typing into safe, but took it a digit at a time. I then had no recollection of any of it

* I think if you were to use a mechanical 4 digit "realtor box" type key safe, you would be less likely to remember the combination if you were to take the digits out of order - set the 3rd one then 1st then 4th then 2nd, for instance - I've not tried it though

I hope that's of some interest to someone. As I say, not the only way to use chastikey but it meets my original objectives.

Feel free to feed back to me on any point around this.