[optacon-l] Re: Hi, Optaconers

From: Judy Jones <sonshines59@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Marco Cervi <shimmel@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2020 06:26:50 -0700 (PDT)

We need people on the list the ability to marry the ideas to
practicalityof marketing, funding, and producing. If you all have these
abilities, or any contacts with an interest, please recommend this list.

Judy
sent from the HIMS Android BrailleSense Polaris

----- Original Message -----
From: Marco Cervi
To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Thursday, March 26, 2020 01:16 AM
Subject: [optacon-l] Re: Hi, Optaconers

Hello,
We are dreaming, dreaming, dreaming…….
I hope that one day someone will REALLY develop a new device similar to
Optacon. Maybe…. one day.
Marco

Il giorno 26 mar 2020, alle ore 02:44, ha scritto:

I think you might be overcomplicating things. Any new optacon would

probably have to have zoom features just like the ones you find on phones
andare used in computer mag nification 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 On Behalf Of David
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2020 3:03 PM
To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; Carolyn
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
thickprint. 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

toeach 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 - th e 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
th

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 a bout 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
andboldness 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 re ading 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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[optacon-l] Re: Hi, Optaconers

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