[Blindtlk] devices RE: introduction

Tue Sep 11 05:01:06 UTC 2012

Wow! :) That's an interesting history! I love learning about these
things. I'm just learning a few things about the Federation, and I
love gaining a broader knowledge of anything I can. :)
So, thanks!

On 9/10/12, Lloyd Rasmussen <lras at sprynet.com> wrote:
> Harvey Lauer, from the Veteran's Administration Hines Rehabilitation Center
>
> was involved in studying and promoting the Stereotoner in the early 1970s.
> In an article he wrote for the Monitor, he described an earlier device
> called the Optophone, which may date back to 1913.  The Stereotoner had a
> camera with a single column of photo sensors, each controlling the volume of
>
> a tone of a particular pitch.  Like the Optacon, you had to hand-track the
> camera across the print in order to read anything.  You can make the vOICe
> program act somewhat like a stereotoner, but tracking a camera across print
>
> might be difficult to simulate.  After a while it became apparent that the
> Optacon, though more expensive, was also better for most users. I think that
>
> both devices used some integrated circuits and some discrete transistors,
> since the IC was invented around 1959.
>
> It's hard for young people to imagine this, but around 1971-1973 the only
> exhibits at NFB national conventions, besides literature, were by
> Telesensory Systems, the maker of the Optacon, and the BED-3 braille
> embosser by Triformation Systems, which slowly produced braille on paper
> tape.  The Optacon  was the first electronic aid that captured the attention
>
> of a lot of blind people.  In the 1950s people began to send their computer
>
> output to line printers in such a way that they could get a poor-quality
> braille printout.  By 1967, Mike Freeman, while at Reed College, programmed
>
> its computer so that he could hear its output in Morse Code through an FM
> radio in the computer room.  In 1968, programmers at Lawrence-Livermore
> Laboratories hooked one of their computers to an analog-to-digital converter
>
> and audio amplifier so the output could be spelled out for Jim Willows.  By
>
> 1971 the Votrax speech synthesizer began to be developed by an engineer in
> Michigan.
>
> In 1975 Master Specialties sold a talking scientific calculator for $2,500.
>
> In 1976 TSI sold their Speech Plus four-function talking calculator for
> merely $400.  And in 1975, Alan Schlank was sent to Boston to get a
> demonstration of a rumored reading machine being developed by someone named
>
> Raymond Kurzweil.  So by 1980 a small but growing number of technology
> exhibits were at the NFB conventions.  The rest is history.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hyde, David W. (ESC)
> Sent: Monday, September 10, 2012 8:45 AM
> To: 'Lloyd Rasmussen' ; 'Blind Talk Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: [Blindtlk] devices RE: introduction
>
> Lloyd, I haven't seen this device, but it reminds me a bit of a short lived
>
> reading device called a stereotoner. As I remember it, this thing gave each
>
> printed letter an acoustical pitch, and it is alleged that some people used
>
> it to read printed material.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blindtlk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindtlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Lloyd Rasmussen
> Sent: Saturday, September 08, 2012 10:02 PM
> To: Blind Talk Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Blindtlk] devices RE: introduction
>
> the vOICe is not really a device, but it uses devices you may already have.
> If you have a webcam connected to your PC, or if you have it look at your
> screen or the active window or the area around the mouse pointer, it
> converts the image into a "soundscape" which is an audio signal, rescanned
> every two seconds, which represents the image.  Probably best used with
> stereo headphones.  In this representation, an imaginary vertical line scans
>
> across the image from left to right.  At each instant, tones are generated
> with highest pitch being toward the top of the image, and with volume of
> each pitch corresponding to the brightness of the image at that point.  By
> default, 64 different frequencies are generated, and 176 vertical lines
> constitute a two-second scan.  A single vertical line would sound like a
> burst of noise.  A horizontal line sounds like a tone of constant pitch
> which lasts the whole 2 seconds, which pans from left to right in your
> headphones.  A print capital V would sound like a tone which falls and then
>
> rises in pitch, repeated every two seconds.  You can adjust most of the
> parameters of how the image is sonified, including zooming it, changing the
>
> scan rate, reversing the video, filtering by one color, etc.
>
> It's a small Windows executable.  People who really get into this obtain a
> webcam that is built into a pair of glasses, put a portable computer in a
> backpack (providing for enough ventilation), run the software with speech
> recognition, and walk around the house or the area learning how to
> distinguish objects, learning about how occlusion and parallax work, etc.
>
> Whereas the Optacon was a direct translation aid (the human has to do all
> the work of interpreting what the camera sees) for printed material, the
> vOICe is probably most useful as a direct translation aid for sensing the
> environment or quick rendering of images that appear on a PC.  Like the
> Optacon, it takes lots and lots of practice to get good at using it, and it
>
> remains mostly a subject for experimentation rather than a tool that a lot
> of blind people are using in their daily lives.  It would not be a good
> travel aid, in my opinion, because you need to hear environmental sounds and
>
> the time to recognize a scene is long.  And Peter Meijer, the author, is
> careful not to make any claims that it would be a good substitute for a cane
>
> or guide dog.  The first version, run in dedicated hardware, is now 20 years
>
> old.  I think that the Windows executable is about 15 years old (undergoes
> continuous improvements).  An Android  version has been in Google Play for
> about 2 years.  He also did one for Simbian cell phones, but these are
> disappearing from the market.
>
> This is probably more than you wanted to know, but I think it is
> fascinating.  www.seeingwithsound.com .
> Lloyd Rasmussen, Wheaton, MD, W3IUU
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Nusbaum
> Sent: Saturday, September 08, 2012 10:22 PM
> To: 'Blind Talk Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: [Blindtlk] devices RE: introduction
>
> Hi Roger,
>
> I've heard of this device, but I don't think it works quite like the
> Optacon. From what I read about it, it seemed like some kind of device that
>
> simulated the sense of sight by making the blind person feel like he/she is
>
> seeing the object being detected by the VOICE. I was kind of intrigued by
> this technology, but couldn't quite wrap my head around how it works. I
> would be interested to hear any firsthand accounts of how the technology
> works from anybody who has actually used the device. By the way, I read
> about this device in an article in the Matilda Ziegler magazine a few months
>
> ago.
>
> Chris
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blindtlk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindtlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Roger devin Prater
> Sent: Saturday, September 08, 2012 9:35 PM
> To: Blind Talk Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Blindtlk] devices RE: introduction
>
> Hmm, have any of you tried the vOICe? http://seeingwithsound.com It works,
> as far as I know about the opticon, like it, only it uses sound instead of
> tactiles, and is free. http://seeingwithsound.come just in case I misspelled
>
> it the first time, LOL.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mike Freeman" <k7uij at panix.com>
> To: "Blind Talk Mailing List" <blindtlk at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: "Blind Talk Mailing List" <blindtlk at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Saturday, September 08, 2012 8:26 PM
> Subject: Re: [Blindtlk] devices RE: introduction
>
>
>> Absolutely not! Translation into Braille means the unit would be
>> telling you what it think it sees, not letting you interpret for
>> yourself what the unit sees.
>>
>> Mike
>>
>
>
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-- 
"Blindness is not what defines me, yet there are many things that do."
Jasmine Kotsay, 2007