WeWALK Smart Cane 2

00:08 S1

Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from April the 29th, 2025. I'm Stephen Jolley. Great to have you with us - listening maybe through Vision Australia Radio, associated stations of the Radio Reading Network or 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 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. Hey, Damo.

00:50 S2

G'day, Stephen.

00:51 S1

Damo, this week you're going to take us for a walk with your WeWALK Smart Cane.

00:58 S2

Yes, I certainly am.

01:00 S1

The WeWALK Smart Cane 2. So you took it out on the track a few days ago?

01:06 S2

Yes, I did, so I'm able to sort of demonstrate some of the buttons, the quality of the audio and some of the features that... make this a really interesting and very useful device if you're a cane user.

01:18 S1

Damo McMorrow on the road with his Smart Cane 2.

01:22 S2

So let's start with a description of the device itself. So for all intents and purposes, the WeWALK Smart Cane 2 feels very like any other long cane that you might be familiar with. We've got a rubber grip at the top of the cane. We have a piece of elastic which holds everything together, and at the other end we have the ball type cane tip. There are a few differences though. So the first thing that you will notice with this is that the tip is a 360 tip. So it can roll, but it can also pivot. So it's designed to not... get stuck when you, you know, encounter gravel or uneven surfaces and those sorts of things. 

Now, because the cane shaft is an amber tech shaft, you can install other tips on this cane. You can use, for example, the marshmallow tip, that kind of thing. However, we will do say that... all of the obstacle detection functionality is calibrated using this 360 tip. I don't mind it myself, but I have heard others say that they don't like it and that they think it's too large. But, personally, I haven't really found it to be a problem. The other thing you'll notice is that the handle is a little different to most other canes. And... when I say that, what I mean is that we have a number of buttons and sensors and things on the handle. 

So the handle is secured to the cane with an adapter, you can unscrew the handle from the cane, but I wouldn't recommend you do that unless you, you know, need to send it back for repair or you're having a problem with it because it can be difficult to get on and off. So normally I would leave it assembled if I was you. So on the top of the handle we have the speaker grille and it's a Harman Kardon speaker. It's actually quite loud. And we'll... take it for a little walk in a minute, and I can show you that we have a USB C port on one side of the handle. And that's for obviously charging the handle, which contains all of the smarts. 

A little further down on the same side of the handle, we have a couple of buttons. Now, one of which doesn't do anything at the moment, I don't think, but the other controls the obstacle detection mode. Turning the handle around, we've got a series of four buttons, and these are for controlling the navigation functionality of the cane, and also the voice assistant, which I will also demonstrate in a moment. And a little below that we have the obstacle detection sensor. It just feels like a small slot, almost a little bit like a slotted screw, but wider and below that we have a small smooth area, which is the flashlight, and that's really all there is to it in terms of the hardware on the cane. 

The idea of this, though, is that while you do pair the cane with your phone, you shouldn't need to get your phone out of your pocket. Once that's done, you should just be able to turn the cane on and have it connect through the walk app. And then everything is driven from the um. The hand grip on the side of the cane. You can use it in either left or right handed mode. The trick is to make sure that the sensor, the obstacle detection sensor, is pointing up. So that gives you a good sort of way to orientate yourself around the cane. 

Now, in terms of the buttons, let me just tell you about those and then we'll go and take the device for a quick walk, so the row of four buttons are the main ones that you'll use. So the top one is our power button and that is a square shape. We've then got a an arrow that sort of points upwards towards the top of the cane. So it's a triangular button. We then have a circular button which is used to trigger the voice assistant, and then we have a downward pointing arrow at the bottom of that row of buttons. The buttons that control the obstacle detection functionality are just two small round buttons. 

So I'm going to power the cane on now, and I've got the walk app running on my phone as well. And I'm going to do that by holding down the square button. So that's the top one closest to the speaker. And we hear that little tune that tells us it's powered up, connected, and there's our sound to indicate that the cane is connected. So from here I shouldn't really need to touch my phone at all. So there are a few things we can do here so we can save locations and navigate to them. And we can also use the voice assistant. And we do that by holding the circular button down and speaking. So for example I could do something like this. Where is the nearest cafe?

06:23 S3

I found five addresses. I will sort it based on distance, starting with the nearest location address one by an e cafe. Address two three tiers. Cafe. Address three cafe Ava. And so on. So we can go through the different search results because it's using ChatGPT, you know, you can also ask it random things. I don't quite know why you would ask your cane, for example, for a chocolate chip cookie recipe, but in theory you could. What we'll do now is we'll pop outside and I will show you the obstacle detection functionality. 

Okay, so we're now outside. Apologies for the wind noise, but not too much I can do about it today. I'm holding the cane in my left hand because I'm a left handed cane user, and I'm going to turn on the obstacle detection mode. Now there are three settings. There's short, mid and far. This is obviously to alter, you know how how sensitive the obstacle detection functionality is. And then if I press it again it turns it off. The other thing we can do is by pressing and holding this button.

07:39 Electronic voice

Obstacle detection. Sound off.

07:41 S2

We can turn the sound off so that the cane vibrates instead, which you may want, because the audio is kind of a little bit makes you feel a little bit conspicuous, I would say. But for the moment, let's turn it on.

07:56 E-voice

Obstacle detection sound on.

07:58 S2

And I'm going to select the short mode. And you'll hear the the beeping. And the closer I get or the further away I get the softer the sound. Now it doesn't detect things that the the cane tip will pick up. It's designed to detect between things, between your waist and your head height. So as I approach this obstacle. You'll hear that it gets faster if I back away from it. It'll it'll the sound will will slow down if I set it to mid as an example. Now I haven't moved but it's picking it up where it wasn't on short mode. 

Okay. So it really depends on how you use the device as to, you know, how you might want that set up. Uh, as I said, I can also turn that off. So I've now turned it off and the cane is now just vibrating in my hand. The closer I get to the obstacle, the stronger the vibration. And as I back away, that vibration becomes less. So that's.... the obstacle detection mode. So as I said, you would use that. I'll just stop that for a moment. You would use that as a means of detecting things like overhanging branches.... perhaps a parked car or like a utility vehicle where the cane tip might go under the back of the tray, but you're likely to hit the tray... you know, at stomach height or head height, that kind of thing. 

So it does give you a little bit extra protection than you would have using a conventional long cane. So that's that's the obstacle detection function to turn on the flashlight. If we're using the cane at night, we can press and hold the up arrow key flashlight on. And the flashlight is now on. And I'm told it's quite bright and quite visible. And if you've got a little bit of usable vision, you may also find it quite helpful.

10:21 E-voice

Flashlight.

10:22 S2

The other thing we can do is to press and hold the circular button, and that'll get us into our My Places menu. And that's where you can save your... favourite locations and those sorts of things. So I'll just quickly show you that. 

E-voice

My places. 

S2

So there it said My Places. And if we press the circular button again... so that's obviously my home address. And if I use the arrow keys...

10:50 E-voice

373 Old Cleveland Road.

10:53 S2

So that's now my work address, which is the Vision Australia office at Cooperoo - I can then if I want to select that. We can select Go there.

11:06 E-voice

373 Old Cleveland Road, route one... transport 54 minutes walking then walking.

11:16 S2

Okay, so that's given me a direction to walk to the local train station and catch the Cleveland line to Shorncliffe and then walk again.

11:26 E-voice

And that transport one hour ten minutes walking then then walking, okay, 150, then walking, then 209, then walking.

11:37 S2

So if I wanted to take a really convoluted route there instead, I could, you know, I could have selected that option, which is a train, some walking and a couple of buses. So there's a couple of different ways of doing this, but there's a couple of things I suppose to note, from me, showing you that one is obviously that it is public transport aware, which is nice. And that it does try to give you a few different options to get to your destination, and you can cycle through those using the arrow keys. 

So there we go, folks. Hopefully that gives you a little bit of an overview of the walk. Smart cane two. I've certainly enjoyed using it. As I've mentioned on the program before, I am predominantly a dog user, but, I did take this over to the United States recently because I couldn't take my dog with me, and I did find it extremely helpful. I hope you've enjoyed this review. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to send me an email.

12:34 S1

Good on you, Damo. Damo McMorrow out on the track there, putting the WeWALK Smart Cane t2 through its paces. And if you'd like to find out more about the WeWALK, you could check it out by going to the Vision Store of Vision Australia. That's shop.visionaustralia.org. Whenever I want to find out something about a vision store product, I just go to the Search button which is on the top of the home page, and from there you can enter the name of the product. In this case you just type. WeWALK [spells it]. It's not case sensitive. 

And then the WeWALK references will come up and you can look at information about their 48 inch, 54 inch or 59 inch products. So that's the We WALK, available from the shop at Vision Australia. There's some very interesting info there about the product, the specifications and other details and links to a video as well that will explain more about it. And I believe it sells for $1,495. 

Now, before we go, a little note about this program. Talking Tech has been going for around 13 years. If you're a regular listener to the show, you won't want to miss next week's Significant Edition, a very special presentation of Talking Tech. Now, a reminder that for details of what you can find in this and previous editions of the program, just go to VA - varadio.com. And to write to the program...

14:21 S2

You can email me at [?]

14:29 S1

This has been Talking Tech - with me has been Vision Australia's national access technology manager Damien McMorrow. I'm Stephen Jolley. Take care. We'll talk more tech next week. Don't forget to tune in for it. See you.