An interesting point. A year ago I thought the optacon III was sewn up in a
bag, or rather a comprehensive reading unit with the optacon as the heart
looking like a fancied up optacon II with some nice and useful and
streamlined features. then the one-handed suggestion came up. Although
personally I wish for little more if anything than what we have now, I do
know that our present conservative optacon approach will simply not fly, and
so this is one reason why I had designed it to read using Acapela (tried
Loquendo I think it was), and a host of other features which in no way
obscures nor hinders the standard optacon feature. Now, however, it is
being reduced to little more than a smart optacon display with the option to
connect it to a more conprehensive work station or device as part of that
pakage. it does retain of course the basic optacon features and a few more
things without a more comprehensive work station. That basic hardware and
software are pretty well as straightforward as they get. The original
design had several USB ports, any one of which could have been used to
connect to another optacon III, a display, a computer etc. At this point
(and I am not in favour of USB 3.X; perhaps 4.X will be better and more
robust), the simple optacon-like module has a female USB 3.0 port into which
can be plugged anything from another optacon, to a standard display, or into
a comprehensive work station, or it can be slid into a so-designed device
between dots 1 and 4, and this is against my intuition or gut feeling; all
of it. Would have been better off with the original nifty, small,
comprehensive all-in-one package. The camera has its own port now; what is
an optacon without the haptic feedback and functionality of its camera? I
perceive that most on the list just want their optacon technology in
whatever form to be there for them and that is that. We must think of the
future. In ten years or less, the optacon user landscape will have
inevitably changed, and some of us will have journeyed to that far away
country from which no one returns. I am likely one of the youngest optacon
users on the list, and I will be 50 in March (disgusted). A simple, modern
version of what we have will simply not fly, and we must take thought of the
future. So, the scaled down version--the optacon III smart display actually
feels something like a small dash-cam, or a chubby domino, with our familiar
slightly smaller controls on its front, small, not to my particular liking,
but a crude one-handed model (or rather I should more correctly say a one
with one-handed capability) has been subjectively tested by the worst
qualified tester for the job--that is me. I mulched one of my reading
(right) index fingers off to at least the first joint in May of 2006 (God
healed it but infection set in), and so I cannot use it as my natural
leading finger for reading braille or the optacon. I did adjust somewhat
and use the right middle finger to read braille, and I use the left index to
read the optacon, but at this point the right middle and the right index are
hopeless for reading an optacon, and I have since that accident needed to
use both left index and right middle to read and comprehend braille; can no
longer glide casually along using one finger on either hand. Gone forever,
alas. So, although I can physically hold the one-handed arrangement in my
right hand, I cannot read with the damaged finger, and the middle finger is
at best mediochre for reading braille and that paired with the left index.
Holding and comprehending the one-handed optacon arrangement in my left hand
is hopeless, for me anyway but I do not know about others. The brain was
wired for the right index all the way, and it took a year to relearn to read
braille all over again, except that I did retain the knowledge in my mind as
a guiding template. An interesting, odd, frustrating and amusing experience
which took a great deal of work and ongoing perseverance. So, for braille,
my right had was and still tries to be my leading hand (the hand was also
damaged in 2006). However, for optacon use, I use my left index, and not
any finger on the right hand to read; basically I cannot. It is as much
neurological as anything I think, and to some extend training.
For me (and I can speak for no other) trying to read with a one-handed
optacon, perhaps because of training, is way slower and more cumbersome than
using the instrument as an haptic device with two hands. One can get into
interesting discussions about what happens in the brain when it comes to
using an optacon one-handed or two-handed, because it is an haptic device,
perhaps more so than a braille device whereby the hand glides over the
surface, and even though tactile and kinasthetic sense are combbined, the
exercise is different from using a one-handed optacon; not like reading
braille with one hand, not at all. No.
So, the original souped up very nice optacon II-like device did easily
connect to whatever one wished. The more than half-baked small optacon III
module (which feels like the shape of a dash-cam without the suction cup)
has limited connectivity because it has but one USB port, and one would not
likely want to retask the camera/mouse port or remove the device to have a
mindless display with tactile feedback but with no kinaesthetics and
therefore no haptic sense of things about it.
I have developed inexpensive and robust braille technology modules of
several types (around which one just can wrap what box they wish), a few of
which at least I have outlined to Dave Godfrey in merry ol' England. I also
read somewhere of a bubble technology being worked on. So, if one connects
this annoying optacon III smart display to a more comprehensive work
station, then at the cost of some convolution anything is possible.
By the way, the camera has been redone to also work as a mouse when needed,
rather than plugging in a separate mouse. Not difficult, but now the whole
optacon III smart display feels like it is full of too many things crunched
in together somehow (not physically but viscerally), like that nagging
restless feeling created by the awareness of a cluttered crowded drawer.
I hadn't meant to get into all that, having become disgusted and wary
overall, but there it is. Besides, I'm off the lab and major stuff which
pay until around April, and hopefully will be better then. A chamber blew
up whilst I was casually waiting and not involved, but it turned out I was
in the blast range, and so received flash burns and internal tissue injury.
It is still har to type even a small message, although I do feel better by
the week, albeit I do miss the fluffy lap of my late gentle honey. So, we
shall see after that what will be.
Chuck
-----Original Message-----
From: David
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2017 12:27 PM
To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [optacon-l] Regarding the new Optacon. Question for Charles
Charles,
We have all been following your updates regarding the development for
the new Optacon. One thing that crossed my mind, I wanted to ask you.
Does the new model have any feature for connecting two Optacons parallel?
What i am thinking of, is that a blind student can use his Optacon for
reading some material. We know that the old Optacon 1 and 2, both had
connectors for a visual display, which would let the sighted teacher
keep track of what the blind person actually was feeling in his finger.
A really nice feature of the Optacon. But one thing I missed with the
previous models, was the chance of connecting my Optacon, with that of
someone else. If now the new model could have a way for the blind
teacher, to feel a copy of the actual dispaly of his blind student, it
would greatly increase the chance for a blind-to-blind instruction.
Even if we go outside the classroom, this kind of feature might be
worth. Say I am to help someone blind getting used to their new
microwave, and she moves her Optacon around the keys and dispaly of the
oven. I then - as things stand today - will have to keep asking her
"what do you feel", and depend solely on what she explains to me. Had I
a chance of feeling a copy of her Optacon directly myself, I could have
told her to move up a bit, turn down the contrast, do something about
the magnification, or whatever.
Being able to teach blind-to-blind, might also be one way of promoting
the introduction and usage of a new Optacon model. If we will depend on
new users learning things through a sighted person, we first will have
to convince the sighted world we really need to learn using the Optacon.
And isn't that one of the main reasons things stand the way they do: We
never really got through with that conviction? So if a blind could
encourage the usage of a new Optacon directly to another blind person,
we have skipped at least one obstacle on the marketing path, I would think.
Of course, the connection between the two Optacons could have been done
through a USB like cable. But to optimize the thing, I could have wished
for the alternative of some sort of wireless connection between the two
units.
Don't know whether you have already taken steps for such a feature,
Charles, or if it is possible to implement the feature this state of the
development. And it might be worth to hear what other users think about
the necessarity of such a feature. So the idea hereby has been thrown on
the board, and I will leave it for the community for further discussion.
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