Latest from Blazie, Quantum, Humanware, Apple and Vispero

00:33 S1

Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from October the 29th, 2024. I'm Stephen Jolley, great to have you with us listening maybe through Vision Australia Radio, associated Stations of the Radio Reading Network and the Community Radio Network. There is also the podcast. To catch that, all you need to do is search for the two words talking tech and down. It can all come usually on a Tuesday afternoon just after it's been produced. Another option is to ask your Siri device or smart speaker to play. Vision Australia radio talking tech podcast. Vision Australia radio talking tech podcast. 

With me. Vision Australia's national access technology manager. Damo McMorrow. 

S2

Hi, Stephen. 

S1

Hi, Damo. How are you?

01:18 S2

Yeah, I'm well. Thanks. Nice to be with you again.

01:21 S1

Damien, let's talk a bit about hardware and firmware today. A number of topics to cover. One of the things we haven't discussed for some time Is the BT Speak from Blazie technologies.

01:36 S2

Yes, the BT Speak is a really interesting little device. Actually, those people who back in the 80s or 90s used a Braylon speak, which from what was then Blazie engineering will find this device quite familiar because it really is sort of a modern version of the Braylon speak. So it has a Perkins style Braille keyboard, and speech output. So there's no Braille output on this one. It uses a device called a Raspberry Pie as its base. And while that sounds like something edible, it definitely isn't. It's a very small microcomputer, and it has USB-C connectivity, a mini HDMI port, and an SD card slot. The unit itself is about the size of... two iPhone 15 Pro's stacked on top of each other. That's probably the easiest way to sort of conceptualise the size of it. 

And it came out... around about, I think, January or February this year, and it's had quite a few updates. I know David did speak about it a little bit, I think at the time that it came out, but it's... evolved quite a bit since then because Blastech, they're a small company, really a small start up, but they've certainly gone ahead in leaps and bounds with the device. They've been very receptive to user feedback and suggestions of additional features. And the other unique thing about it is that in addition to what they call traditional mode, where it functions like the Braille and speak of old, it runs at its core the Linux operating system, which means that you can run desktop apps like Google Chrome, Firefox, the Thunderbird email client, and so on. So it can really be as simplified or as powerful as you want it to be.

03:33 S1

It is amazing what you can get out of it. And I'm also impressed with the really transparency of the developers, very different to other organisations. People do make suggestions and they say, yeah, we'll put that on the list. And sure enough, it could well turn up in a future update. They bring out updates quite regularly every month or two. Quite amazing. And it's been interesting following their progress since January-February this year.

04:02 S2

It certainly has. You know, they've they've introduced a number of different features. There's a now a radio tuner. So a web radio-type application where you can listen to I think over 50,000 stations. It's got in its database. There's now a calendar application and a phone book application. A whole range of things that have really been added since the original release, where it was really just a, you know, glorified text editor. You know, there's a weather app as well. There's all sorts of different things that have been added, so it really has come a long way in a very short time.

04:38 S1

And released this week a very comprehensive user manual.

04:42 S2

Yes. That's right. So when the device first came out, it really just came out with some help files, which were just sort of short text files. There was a couple of YouTube videos and so on. Whereas now there is a very comprehensive audio tutorial. I think it's about 2.5 hours in length. And there is also, as you said, a comprehensive user manual that's available in word format and PDF format. And it's all nicely marked up in headings, so it's easy to kind of navigate through it and search for particular things. And it... is going to be, as they say, a living document. So it is going to evolve over time as they add new features. But it is a much better start, I think, for people who are just new to the device in terms of helping them to get up and running and to understand... how to navigate just using the Perkins style Braille keyboard.

05:36 S1

We'll put the address to the Blastech website in the show notes, and there you'll be able to find details of how to order. You can't buy directly in Australia. You've got to do it from overseas from here.

05:46 S2

That's right. Yes, they they don't have sub-distributors yet. It's direct from Blastech.

05:51 S1

And we're talking about somewhere in the order of 1500 to 2000 dollars Australian.

05:58 S2

Yes, depending on shipping and exchange rates and so on. 

06:02 S1

So that's the BT speak from Blazie technologies. Another device to talk about is from OrCam, which will be available through Vision Australia and also through Quantum World. And that's another in the Orcam series people might know about the Orcam read three. This is an awesome light. Tell us about it.

06:26 S2

IYes, so the OrCam Read Light looks quite similar to the OrCam Read 3. So it is a handheld device rather than a wearable device like the Orcam, Myeye and Mipro, which were the ones that... attached using magnets to a pair of glasses. So this is a handheld device that can also be placed in a stand. So there is a stand available as an accessory for it. And it's really quite similar to the read three, but without some of the advanced AI features. So it really focuses on the reading component. So being able to read text and you can use it for those that have low vision, it has sort of a laser pointer so that you can point at and read specific paragraphs. Or for those of us with no vision, you can pop it into the stand and capture a whole page, or you can still use it as a handheld. 

It does take a little bit of practice, I think, to get it centered nicely so that you can capture the page. It is very small... not not a lot bigger than a sort of a large USB stick, and it does work quite well in low lighting conditions. So you would be able to read things like a restaurant menu or that type of thing with it. The other thing about the OrCam that a lot of people like, and all of the OrCam products are similar in this respect, is that they don't require an internet connection. So whereas other OCR devices need internet connectivity because they process the information in the cloud, this does it offline - and that can be extremely useful if you are working in a secure environment, or if you have concerns about sort of the privacy and where your where your documents are going and where they're being processed and so on. All of the processing is done on the device itself.

08:23 S1

The OrCam Read Light - the price is light compared with other OrCam readers.

08:30 S2

It is. It comes in at around about $1,480, which you know, is is definitely within that sort of NDIS consumables price bracket. And you know, and that's the idea of it. It perhaps doesn't have the bells and whistles that the Mii, or perhaps even the Read 3 or the Read Smart had. But as a low cost and highly portable reading tool... it's a great little product, I think.

08:58 S1

So that's the OrCam Read Light from Vision Australia or directly from Quantum RV. 

The Victor Reader Stream 3. Tell us about that.

09:09 S2

So the Victor Reader Stream 3 has been out for a little while and it, funnily enough, follows on from the original Stream and the Stream version 2. So this is Humanware's small handheld media player slash Daisy player... and the Stream 3 has been out for a while, and it... introduced Bluetooth as one of its major new features, as well as some improved voices and a little bit of a physical redesign of the unit itself. And this week Humanware have released an updated firmware for it, which they're calling version 1.4. And there's a couple of significant additions in this update. 

The first is a couple of new voices, so if we have anyone listening in the Canadian market, there are two new Canadian voices and they have upgraded the text to speech engine. It's still acapella, but it's a newer version which addresses some issues with some of the voices stuttering and so on. They have added some new Bluetooth profiles, and what that means is that for people who had difficulty connecting the stream three to their Bluetooth hearing aids, Humanware strongly suggest giving it another try because they the new profiles that they've introduced will improve the connectivity to a lot of hearing aid type devices. So definitely worth a look. 

There's also now the ability to categorise voice notes. So previously all of your voice notes were just in one big long list... with the most recent appearing first. Now you can actually categorise it. So if you have some voice notes that you take for work and some for home or, you know, some of them are phone numbers, perhaps, and some of them are recipes or other things you can categorize that to make the list a little bit easier to navigate through.

11:05 S1

Yes. Voice notes can be a challenge to manage, so that sounds quite good. So this upgrade is already there. Do people have to do much to get it?

11:14 S2

You should be able to either download it over Wi-Fi, or you can download the upgrade to your computer, copy it to your SD, your SD card, put it in the root of the SD card or the top level of folders there, and then power on the stream and it should find the upgrade. So generally the the upgrades for the stream devices are tend to be fairly easy to install. They take a little while, but it keeps you, you know, across what it's doing. It is always worth having your device plugged into power if you're doing any upgrades, just so that the battery doesn't fail partway through. In fact, I think most of them now, most of these devices won't actually allow you to install the upgrade unless it's connected to power.

11:55 S1

The Victor Reader Stream 3 from Humanware. 

Well, it's a big week for Freedom Scientific, the annual software upgrades.

12:06 S2

Yes. So we are expecting a version 2025 of Jaws, fusion and Zoomtext to be released this week. As is often the case the last week in October. We have mentioned this a couple of times over the last few weeks. So, hopefully by now you have upgraded your software maintenance agreement, or SMA if you have one, so that when these updates are released, you'll be able to just download and install them. And there are some quite exciting things coming... which we will be able to talk about next week, hopefully.

12:40 S1

And another thing we'll be able to talk about next week is the new versions of the Apple software, which are dropping this week. Some of you might already have them on your devices. iOS 18.1 for the iPhone, for the iPad, and also another version of Sequoia for the Mac. So that's pretty exciting too.

13:02 S2

It is indeed. It's always nice to see what's coming. I don't think that we'll get the new Siri, the Apple intelligence based version of Siri, in 18.1. I think that's only available in the US at this stage, but I am looking forward to trying that because I do find myself getting a little bit frustrated with Siri these days.

13:22 S1

A little birdie told me that might be an interesting Christmas present when iOS 18.2 comes out around Christmas time. But this takes us on that journey towards Apple intelligence. And there are some interesting features in iOS 18.1, so be good fun to explore.

13:38 S2

Absolutely, looking forward to it.

13:40 S1

Before we go, a reminder of where there are details of what we've been talking about in this and previous editions of the program, all you need to do is go to VA radio.org/talking tech. VA radio, dot org slash talking tech. And to write to the program...

13:58 S2

You can email me Damo Dot McMorrow, that's Damo dot m c m o r r o w - at Vision Australia dot org - and thank you to everybody who has written in. I really appreciate your encouragement and your comments.

14:12 S1

You've been getting a few, have you?

14:13 S2

I have indeed, yes. Yeah.

14:15 S1

Terrific. All right. So don't forget that email address. If there's something you want to say to Damo or myself... damo.mcmorrow@visionaustralia.org ... This has been Talking Tech, with me has been Vision Australia's national access technology manager Damo McMorrow. I'm Stephen Jolley. Stay safe. We'll talk more tech next week. See you.