I am not of the opinion that patents killed the Optacon.
What killed the Optacon is technological progress. In economics, one would
call this "marginal cost", for most people, reading text got much easier
when software became available that worked with off-the-shelf scanners to
convert text into audio. You didn't need excellent motor skills or good
sensory capability to read; you didn't need to go through intensive training
of four weeks or so to be able to read at a nominal 50 words-per-minute when
you can put a page on a scanner and read at 250 wpm almost immediately.
Are there things that you can do with an Optacon that couldn't be done with
a scanner?
Certainly, but here again, technology is changing that landscape.
There are apps which can recognize handwritten materials.
There are services that can describe charts and graphs.
Some of this can be done free of charge.
What I'm saying is there are very few needs that can't be met by a currently
available alternative for cheaper that are quicker and present almost no
learning curve.
I know this is not popular to say on this list, but I think a good reality
dose is in order.
What is the market for such a device given all the considerations I've
outlined above? Other than this list of dedicated users, how many people
who are Millennials, or Generation Z, do you know of who have expressed
interest in an Optacon? Exclude all of us on this list who are Baby
Boomers, or a few older than that of the Silent Generation; and who is left?
Can you imagine how much an Optacon would cost after you spread out the
engineering and product development costs once you exclude all of us who are
basically not in the job market or educational market any more?
I just don't see any way that such a device can be justified for the very
limited niche market that might be available.
Steve
Lansing, MI
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mallard" <mallard@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; <dan.tevelde@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2020 5:59 AM
Subject: [optacon-l] Re: Hi, Optaconers
..And all the people said: AMEN!
Amen to this message!
Plus: Open Hardwaer and Open Softeare, please! No moe patents, which is
what eventually killed the Optacon.
Ciao,
Ollie, Androidian forever and ever
On 26/03/2020 02:44, dan.tevelde@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
I think you might be overcomplicating things. Any new optacon wouldth
probably have to have zoom features just like the ones you find on phones
and are used in computer magnification software. NO doubt the best
platform for a new optacon would be Android mobile. A mobile device is
very portable and easy to update. Android is the most open software
platform for development. App updates don't need to be approved by
Google. The only certification would be the initial certification of the
optacon as a trusted device to Google.
Having the optacon be a mobile device would offer the most flexibility.
It's also the type of device most people are familiar with.
Dan
Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On
Behalf Of David
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2020 3:03 PM
To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; Carolyn <4carolyna@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [optacon-l] Re: Hi, Optaconers
Eh, do we see one of the few cases, where we could wish for an electronic
feature of the next generation Optacon?
We have been talking of the benefit of the Optacon leaving all the
interpretation to the human brain. And yet, what if you got a new
Optacon. you sit down and do your reading, and come across a part of the
text in thick print. You now press a button on the Optacon, and a tiny
piece of software kicks in. It does no interpretation, no reshaping, no
nothing. What it is all about, is that it will scan the picture of the
character, and rip off all the thickness. What is left for you to feel,
is a true copy of the character, but with thinner lines.
The basics of the technology could be described as follows.
Scan the image;
Look for continuous lines in the image, where three or more needles next
to each others are active; Cut off one of the needles in such cases.
Your shape-lines of the character, now will be one needle thinner. If you
press the button once again, the software will go one step further,
taking the shape-lines down to one needle - the thinnest and most crisp
you could get.
Of course, there are the moments, when you find yourself wishing there
would be a chance to thicken some text. That could specially be, when a
font type has very thin lines in the top and bottom of the characters.
In such cases, there could be a second button, leaving you the chance to
activate extra needles on the thinner parts of the image.
What do you think. This would be no interpretation, but more a bit of
assistance in "seeing" the shape more clearly, leaving you the better
chance to perform the recognition of the characters. Promise you, when
dealing with things like electronic diagrams, I've been wishing for some
kind of ways to make the lines thicker, just as frequently as I wish
there would be ways to make shapes thinner.
As a bit of a sidenote here, which goes along the same line of ideas, how
about when you read text that vary between bold (emphasized) text, and
plain characters. Or, where you would have a mix of fonts, some more
outstanding than others. Great if you are eager to know the outlook of
the page. And necessary whenever you are to deal with certain features of
the material you read, like recognizing and distinguish the very number,
in a mathematical formula. But it often leads to extensive thumbling with
the knobs of the Optacon, raising and lowering the intensity and
thickness of the displayed image. What if the next Gen Optacon had a
feature, that could be turned on, which would attempt to give some mild
equalization through out the text. It would attempt to reduce the
boldness of the boldest print, somehow making it close to the rest of the
text. A trained user would still feel a slight boldness to the print, but
it would be no more than what still would be readable, without any fur
er adjustment. Kind of a
"This is my reading level"-setting.
This level of adjustment could be saved, and brought up, whenever the
user wants to do a plain reading of text. You then can go for the raw
reading, like we have to day, if you need all the whistles and bells of
the text layout. But in most daily activities, when you do not care much
about the layout, only want to get to the info, the levelled-reading
could be activated.
And yes, of course any such settings should be divided into as small
steps as possible in practical terms. Having only one or two steps of
adjusting, may prove unacceptable. Again, blowing the Optacon with 129
steps for adjusting, will likely be little practically beneficial, and
rather prove frustrating. Something between 8 and 12 steps, either
direction, might be useful. You then could go from minus 12, to plus 12
- 0 being the standard, or Raw mode. Raw mode, would be what we already
have on our current Optacon models.
Technically, these features are possible, and not too difficult to
implement in the software - I would conclude. It is all about algorithms,
and is being done in photo handling in dedicated applications on your
computer and cellphone already. Without me having checked it up, I am
ready to think there might be some freeware algorithms available on the
net already, that could be used for such up and down scaling of the
thickness and boldness of scannings of the printed text.
Lastly, one more thing that I find myself often wishing for, is the
chance of bi-derectional scaling of the image. You all are familiar with
the slider on top of the camera, leaving you the chance of adjusting the
magnification of the character a bit. But it seem to only change the
hight of the character. I wish there would be ways, to adjust the
magnification either direction. Sometimes it would have been nice to
widen the character a bit, other times it is nice to lower the hight.
And there would even be times when you need do a bit of adjustment to
both the hight and width of the character, to have the best reading
experience. Specially this comes true, when you deal with symbols, icons
and things like diagrams of different sorts. If the slider had been
replaced with a four way button, like the arrow-button on some old-style
cellphones and remote controls, you could have stepped up and down in
either hight or width. Press Up-arrow to raise the hight, Down-arrow to
lower it. Press Right-arrow to increase the width, and left-Arrow to
decrease. Even some users might find that they would read better, if the
character could be centered more to the point on their finger, where they
hold the highest sensitivity.
Don't know, what the rest of you think. Got a few more ideas here, but
we'll save them for later.
On 3/25/2020 6:34 PM, Carolyn wrote:
> I agree about thick print, as opposed to thin and sharp
> print.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
> harlynn@xxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2020 3:18 AM
> To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [optacon-l] Hi, Optaconers
>
> This is Bob from Brooklyn, NY. I have been using my optacon
> to go over
> mail: I read part with the optacon, and part with my Sara.
> I like how they work together. I find that my main problem
> is still that I often think I know the next word in a
> sentence, and then realize I guessed wrong, and have to go
> back and figure it out.
>
> Very thick print is challenging for me. But regular print,
> I can do pretty well.
>
> I hope all of you are safe, and perhaps using some down time
> to use your optacons!
>
> Kind regards,
> Bob
>
>
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