[Electronics-talk] Miniguide

[Sarah Clark]

"It's probably a good practice to provide this type of information when 
posting a question about a device or an application that may not be 
familiar to everyone. It'll help get better answers more quickly, and 
it'll cut down on list traffic.
If I see something mentioned I don't recognize, I'll either look it up 
in Google, as Jim suggests, or I'll just hit the delete key. I think the 
original poster has some responsibility here, see my previous point, and 
I don't always have the time to decipher a poorly thought out post."

I apologize, I thought my message was directed to those who have a Miniguide, so I suppose I naively assumed that they would know what it was.

But for those of you who didn't know, I would be happy to explain. It is a device that uses vibrations (and/or audio cues) to help you to detect items you might need to find. For instance, it can help you find mailboxes, trash cans, doorways, when the person ahead of you in line moves forward, etc etc. You can also use it simply to count landmarks, such as the number of trees, until you have to turn right or left. The closer you are to the object in its beam, the faster the vibrations are, and then the vibrations slow down as the object gets farther away. (Or in the case of the audio cues, the pitch of the tone gets higher or lower depending on the distance of the object.). This can be helpful either with a cane where you are kind of limited by the length of the cane, or with a guide dog who is ordinarily trained to keep you away from obstacles.

There used to be a similar product back in the 70's and 80's called the Mowat. My husband had one and he has told me all about it. Unfortunately it hasn't been manufactured in years, but the Miniguide is pretty much the same thing, and from what I understand of it, its an amazing little device that would be extremely beneficial to me.

Sarah