Blind Bargains

#CSUN14 Audio: The E-bot, the Magnifier behind the Hims Robot


Hims caught many people's attention at CSUN with Big E, but the real E that is for sale is their new E-bot video magnifiers which feature support for WIndows and APple tablets. James McCarthy, President of Hims in Austin, joins us to give a demonstration of the device and how it might benefit low-vision users in this podcast. Blind Bargains audio coverage of CSUN 2014 is generously sponsored by the American Foundation for the Blind.

Transcript

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Direct from San Diego, it’s BlindBargains.com coverage of CSUN 2014. The biggest names, provocative interviews, and wall-to-wall exhibit hall coverage, brought to you by the American Foundation for the Blind.

For the latest technology news and accessibility information on cell phones, mainstream and access technology, personal medical devices, office equipment, digital audio players, and web-based and app technologies, log onto Access World, the American Foundation for the Blind’s monthly technology magazine: www.afb.org/aw.

Now, here’s J.J. Meddaugh.

J.J.: We’re here at CSUN 2014 with James McCarthy, the President of HIMS in Austin, and I’m sitting in front of one of the new E-bots. James, welcome back to Blind Bargains.

JC: Thanks very much, J.J. I’m happy to be speaking with you about E-bot here at the CSUN conference.

J.J.: Sure. I talked to the robot E-bot, but this is real E-bot here. Tell us a little bit, what do we have here?

JC: Well, E-bot is actually – there’s three models of E-bot. E-bot is HIMS’ first product in the category of reading, writing, and distance portable video magnifiers with versatile connectivity. There’s model E-bot (reading, writing, and distance), E-bot Advanced (reading, writing, distance, and OCR; it is a screen image OCR, so what you see on the screen is what it will scan and read), and E-bot Pro is reading, writing, distance, and OCR, but it will do a full page scan of the OCR. We use the ABBYY Engine; we use the Acapela TTS.

What it is, for the first time, a video magnifier can be connected to an iPad or Android tablet. How we do this is via Wi-Fi. The E-bot is itself its own Wi-Fi network or access point or hotspot. We’re not depending on the area Wi-Fi. So we have an app on the tablet. You click the E-bot app, and the E-bot and the tablet will find each other, and a display will appear on the tablet, totally wireless.

J.J.: Will that take you off of your current wireless network if you do that, or it’s still independent of that?

JC: Let’s say you have a laptop and you’re using your area Wi-Fi, no, it will not conflict.

J.J.: Okay, but if you were on the Wi-Fi on your iPad…

JC: Yes, it will take you off.

J.J.: Temporarily, and then when you get out of the app, it’ll put you back on?

JC: That’s correct. Exactly.

J.J.: What’s the advantage of having the display on an iPad versus the screen that’s already here?

JC: In schools, when you have limited space, a lot of students are using iPads nowadays, and they like the gesture controls, gesture commands of the iPad. It’s cool. So we’re connecting to the video device or the monitor display device that students are using. A lot of seniors, I’m actually told by our dealers that have stores, a lot of seniors who come in to buy a magnification device are showing up with an iPad, anywhere from a third to 50% of the with age-related macular degeneration who come into their store, and they’re saying “I want a video magnifier that can display on my iPad.” I think it’s the convenience, and it’s the size factor.

But the E-bot will also connect to PC laptops, to a Macbook. To the PC laptop USB 2.0 or 3.0, to the Macbook, of course, using a USB 3.0. And you can connect it to a monitor via the HDMI port that preserves the HD image quality of the E-bot’s HD camera.

J.J.: Let’s describe the layout a little bit, because there is no actual screen on the E-bot, which of course makes sense why you’d need to connect it to something. So we have the flat surface where you currently have a piece of paper sitting. The surface is a little bit wider than 8 ½ by 11, and it’s resting against a panel there on the back with a couple buttons, I see. I see one on the left and one on the right.

JC: We’re sitting in front of an E-bot Pro. The E-bot Pro just has an on/off button for the power and an LED light on/off. The E-bot live camera has LEDs. Four LEDs around the camera to help illuminate the reading service for a better quality image on the monitor screen. But you can turn it on and off. For example, if you’re going to be reading high glossy material, then you might want to turn the LEDs off so that you don’t get the bounce back of the glossy paper.

The E-bot and E-bot advanced models actually have on that back control panel a full panel of controls, whereas the E-bot Pro, the controls are either going to be done from your laptop you’re connected to, using the touch screen gestures of the tablet you’re connected to, or from a wireless remote control that has all of the functions that you need.

J.J.: Just to clarify, to the other two models have screens and this one doesn’t, or do they all not have screens?

JC: None of them have screens. The screen depends on your connectivity.

J.J.: Okay. I also see – that would be a volume knob on the right side there, I see. That’s coming into a headphone jack, so if you’re in a school, you’d want that. Some ports on the back, right?

JC: Correct.

J.J.: Are they being used as USB and some other things there?

JC: Correct. We have a USB port – two USBs, a 2.0 and a 3.0. We have the HDMI port and some other connectors in the back.

J.J.: Extending up from the left side of this back control panel, going up to the camera arm, and then of course that sticks out and over.

JC: On this model, the E-bot Pro, it has both a live video camera and an OCR camera. It has two cameras. That’s how we can accomplish the full page OCR scan.

J.J.: Let’s see how that works.

JC: Let me go ahead and press the OCR button on the wireless remote control. It almost immediately snaps a picture. It’s now processing the scan image.

E-bot: Shakespeare’s father, John Shakespeare, was a wealthy business owner in active Stratford-upon-Avon in England.

J.J.: You have the usual controls for speed?

E-bot: He married Shakespeare’s mother…

J.J.: And navigating through the document?

JC: Correct. There is a menu that you just press the menu button on the remote, and a menu will come onto the screen. You can go in and set your speech volume, your pitch, your speech rate, various speech controls. The menu actually probably appears at about a 4x magnification, but since we have the built-in voice guide on the back panel, we’re not too concerned about enlarging that magnification, because as you scroll up or down, left or right through the menu, the voice guide will speak it out to you.

J.J.: Sure. Do you primarily see this – I mean, this is full page OCR, so perhaps it would work for the blind, but it’s still more of a low vision product, do you think?

JC: It’s designed more as a low vision product, although you can use it as a standalone OCR without attachment to a screen, because the voice guide will guide you through the menus, and any of the buttons that you press, it will guide you through the action that is taking place. Of course, you can probably see most of the actions occurring on the screen as well. For example, if we zoom the magnification up – I’ll press the up arrow on the remote…

E-bot: Zoom 21.

J.J.: And it tells you.

JC: This is Zoom 21, and if I zoom up again…

E-bot: Zoom 23.

JC: Zoom 23. But it also has a display in the bottom middle, a temporary display that says “Zoom 23, Zoom 21.” So you can see it visually or you can listen to it with the voice guide.

J.J.: Also if you’re in a situation where you just want to use it as a magnifier, not have speech at all, if it’s a room that needs to be quiet, you wouldn’t obviously want that to announce.

JC: Correct. You can actually turn off the voice guide in the menu, or you can plug in an earpiece or a headset, so only you can hear it in the room. The voice guide actually turns out to be very interesting for our own demonstrating purposes, because we have several blind employees here at HIMS, and many of them do travel, and the voice guide actually allows them to demonstrate the E-bot independently and know what’s happening on the screen.

J.J.: For sure. Also, the touch screen you mentioned for the tablets and for the iPad, does it extend to if you were to plug into like a Windows computer, is there any software that would enable touch screen gesture control on Windows? Or is that mostly for the iPad and the Android?

JC: It’s just for tablets at this point. And yes, I can actually put my fingers on the screen and spread…

E-bot: Zoom 29.

JC: I just extended it to 29. On the bottom section, I can swipe my finger from right to left, and it…

E-bot: Magenta on black.

JC: It’s changing the image display.

E-bot: Black on white.

JC: So it’s now black on white.

J.J.: And you do that on an iPad?

JC: I’m doing it on the iPad. I can change the image mode; I can also change the contrast level by moving my finger up or down on the right margin.

E-bot: Contrast 38.

JC: Then you can also hold a one finger press in a particular zone of the touch screen, and you can initiate the OCR picture snapshot. So almost every command from the wireless remote control, you can do with an onscreen touch gesture on your tablet.

J.J.: Sure. What are the pricing for the new E-bots?

JC: Three E-bot models: the E-bot, which is reading, writing, and distance with all of the connectivity – all E-bot models have the same connectivity to tablets, laptops, and monitors – so E-bot, no OCR, basic model, $2,695. E-bot Advanced, which is the screen image OCR capability, $2,995, and the E-bot Pro, which is full page scan, is $3,895, but the E-bot Pro also has an interesting feature, and unique: the camera is motorized. So I can press a button on the remote that says “far,” since the camera is currently set on the reading and writing position, which is a near distance –

E-bot: Distance view.

J.J.: Ah.

JC: The camera is moving to the distance view.

J.J.: There it goes, yep.

JC: And it actually said “Distance view” as it removed the close up lens, so it can have a far distance view. Then there’s a potentiometer joystick built onto the remote, and I can actually move this camera left, right, up, or down, and it’s very silent. You really can’t hear the movement.

J.J.: No, I’m not hearing this at all.

JC: So we can pan and tilt the camera to view around the room, find a blackboard in front of a room, a tripod holding some documents that are pinned up on a corkboard, we can view a map here on a simulated classroom that we have in our Booth 805 here at CSUN. And I’m doing this with the joystick on the remote control, since the camera is motorized.

Now, the image, the size, the contrast, and other video parameters are saved in remote or distance mode, and now when I press the “near” button…

E-bot: Near view.

JC: It says “Near view”; the camera is now motorized and returning to the near view. It remembered the distance view parameters, and now it comes back to the reading parameters that it had also memorized.

J.J.: It keeps them separate, then.

JC: So it does have the motorized camera, which is unique. Currently I don’t believe there’s a product on at least the U.S./North American market that has a motorized camera. Now, this joystick also allows us that when we’re in reading mode, we can actually move the paper on the reading platform. It does not have an XY table; that’s how we keep it portable. The E-bot and E-bot Advanced weighs 4 ½ pounds. The E-bot Pro, since it has an extra camera, weighs 5 ½ pounds.

So we can move the document on the reading platform, or we can actually, again, use our joystick and we can read across the line, and when we get to the end of a line, we just press an enter button to do a character return. Then we use our joystick to read across the next line again.

J.J.: Then it jumps down to the next line in the right spot, pretty much.

JC: No, it doesn’t do a line feed. It doesn’t know the level of magnification, so it doesn’t know how much to jump up to get to the next line. But since we don’t have an XY table, the joystick acts as an XY table because the camera is motorized, so we can move the camera to read across rather than manually move the paper.

J.J.: Okay, makes a lot of sense. If people want to get more information about the E-bots or HIMS, what’s the best way to do that?

JC: More information, of course go on the internet. Most customers, even if they’re going to call us, they usually check our website first at www.hims-inc.com. Or you may call into our Customer Service or Technical Support department at (888) 520-4467.

J.J.: Thank you so much, James.

JC: Thank you very much, J.J. Appreciate the opportunity and talking to you and seeing you again at CSUN.

For more exclusive CSUN coverage, visit www.blindbargains.com, or download the Blind Bargains app for your iOS or Android device. Blind Bargains CSUN coverage is presented by the A T Guys, www.atguys.com.

This has been another Blind Bargains audio podcast. Visit BlindBargains.com for the latest deals, news, and exclusive content. This podcast may not be retransmitted, sold, or reproduced without the express written permission of A T Guys. © 2014.

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J.J. Meddaugh is an experienced technology writer and computer enthusiast. He is a graduate of Western Michigan University with a major in telecommunications management and a minor in business. When not writing for Blind Bargains, he enjoys travel, playing the keyboard, and meeting new people.


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