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#CSUN14 Audio: A Low-vision Graphing Calculator with Speech and more from Sight Enhancement Systems


Sight Enhancement Systems is updating their line of SciPlus scientific calculators to include graphing support in both low-vision and speech versions. In addition, a new version of the SceneEye, called the SceneEye 500, improves upon their desktop distance magnifying solution. We spoke with the new president of Sight Enhancement Systems, Rob Hilkes, to learn about the company's latest products in this podcast. Blind Bargains audio coverage of CSUN 2014 is generously sponsored by the American Foundation for the Blind.

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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.

Every parent wonders, “Will I do a good job raising my child?” If your child is visually impaired, you have that question too, and many more. FamilyConnect is a website that gives parents of children who are visually impaired a place to connect with each other, share stories and concerns, and find resources on raising their children from birth to adulthood. You aren’t in this alone. Get connected at www.familyconnect.org.

Now, here’s J.J. Meddaugh.

J.J.: We’re here at CSUN 2014 with Rob Hilkes, who is now the president of Sight Enhancement Systems, with some new products, including a scientific calculator and some new magnifiers. Rob, welcome to Blind Bargains.

RH: Thanks, J.J.

J.J.: So we’ve got a few things here. Why don’t we start with this scientific calculator and tell us a little bit about this.

RH: Sure. Well, it’s still called the Sci-Plus, which is what the predecessor was called. That’s a calculator that’s been very, very successful in schools for the last six or seven years. One of the consistent things we’ve always been asked for is “Do you have graphing functionality?” So what we’ve done with the new calculator is it has a much, much larger screen, and so we’re going to introduce not only speech, of course, but also graphing capability.

J.J.: Would the graphing capability be speech-enabled as well?

RH: Yeah.

J.J.: Okay. The original Sci-Plus, I’m not sure that’s a product that a lot of people are familiar with. It’s more of an educational product. Did it have speech on it as well?

RH: It did. There were two versions, one that had speech and one that did not.

J.J.: Okay. So the current one, you don’t have the speech – I think it’s sitting over here somewhere.

RH: It’s right here.

J.J.: I just want to… It’s probably the size of a tablet, right, but with a lot of keys. If you think of a calculator – because they’re pretty decent sized buttons, and lots of them, and then also a decent sized – what would you say, like a 4 by 6 inch screen up there?

RH: It’s a 7 inch diagonal.

J.J.: Oh, 7 inch diagonal, okay. Right, so between that and the buttons, it ends up being about the size of say like an iPad.

RH: Yeah, it’s about an iPad size.

J.J.: But pretty light. How much is that? That’s under a pound, well under a pound, I’d say.

RH: Yep. The advantage of this over tablets, of course, is it’s very tactile in nature. Especially for people with low vision, they like to be able to find the keys and push them, and that’s a lot harder to do when it’s a touch screen application, obviously.

J.J.: So you’re going to have a combination of low vision and speech calculator, so when you look at the ORION, which is the other one that entered the whole graphing market, that’s really more focused on speech, right?

RH: That’s right. Because what the ORION is, it’s a good product, but it’s a repurposed – it’s not so much a design from the ground up for low vision. It’s got a display and keys that are the size of a normal TI-84, but it does speak.

J.J.: Sure. So this is a product that you guys created from the ground up?

RH: Yeah.

J.J.: Besides the scientific functions, is it pretty full-featured as far as what functions are included?

RH: Yeah, it’s the typical feature list that you’d see in a scientific mathematical calculator, so all the trig functions and stats and exponents and logs and factorial and all that stuff. Plus the ability to do graphing and display graphs.

J.J.: Okay. You have a copy of this now, but now you just have to go through and add the speech and make that happen?

RH: Yeah. The first one we’re launching is the replacement for what we used to call our Sci-Plus 200, which was scientific, no graphing and no speech. Then we’ll roll out graphing and we’ll roll out speech in the coming months.

J.J.: When do you expect to have this released, and how much is it going to cost?

RH: The non-graphing, non-speech one is releasing in April, and the graphing one with all of the speech features and so forth, we’re aiming for the fall. The price range is going to be in the $250 to about $400 range, depending on what features you’ve got on it.

J.J.: Okay, great. Over here we have a new distance – would you call it a desktop distance magnifier, compared to some of the handheld ones? This is a little more weighted down.

RH: Yeah, this is a little bit more robust and substantial.

J.J.: What’s that called?

RH: It’s called the Scene Eye.

J.J.: How do you spell that?

RH: Scene as in s-c-e-n-e, and then eye, e-y-e.

J.J.: Tell us a little bit about that.

RH: So this is the Scene Eye 500, which is the next generation of our popular Scene Eye camera, and it’s a camera that sits on a kid’s desk in school, and they can use it to look at what’s going on at the front of the classroom or what’s going on on their desk. So you can aim it forward to look at the whiteboard or the blackboard, or you can aim it down to look at documents or textbooks that are on your desk.

J.J.: I guess you’d call it like a semi-portable, right? You can fold it up to take it with you from class to class.

RH: Yeah, it’s battery-operated, so you don’t have to worry about cords and so forth.

J.J.: What’s the battery life?

RH: It’s all day. About eight hours.

J.J.: Okay, so you could take it through all your classes and charge it at night.

RH: Yeah. And the nice thing is, with today’s laptops or tablets, which is what you would connect it to, they also have eight or nine hours of battery life. So now we have a situation where a student with low vision can carry this around from class to class all day long and never have to plug in an extension cord, which is pretty good.

J.J.: So how does this compare – you’re using a tablet with this version. Was that different from the original implementation of this?

RH: The previous version did not have a touch screen interface for controlling it, so it was only used with a laptop or a regular computer, because you needed a keyboard and mouse to control the parameters of the camera. Whereas now, this one of course does that, but it also works with touch screen gestures on a tablet or a touch screen laptop.

J.J.: The magnifying image, is it displayed on the tablet or is it displayed on a separate screen?

RH: No, it’s displayed on the tablet screen. In fact, the device has a built-in cradle for a tablet, so that once you open it up, the tablet sort of sits on it.

J.J.: Is that a mainstream tablet, like an Android or an iPad?

RH: At the moment, it works with any Windows tablet, and our goal is eventually to incorporate Android and iPads as well. But right now, it works with Windows or Mac laptops and Windows tablets.

J.J.: So you sell the Scene Eye as a package with a tablet, or by itself?

RH: No, we’ll sell it by itself, because everybody has their own preference for what kind of tablet they want to get.

J.J.: And like we said, it’s mostly ideal for say if you’re sitting in class and you want to read the board.

RH: Yeah, exactly.

J.J.: As far as actual magnification features, there’s other visual effects; how does it differ from the original version?

RH: It’s pretty much the same in terms of how much you can zoom in and zoom out and so forth. One thing that it does better than the original Scene Eye is when you’re looking down at the desk, we’ve done a pretty significant redesign of how the thing opens up, which gets the camera higher off the surface of the desk, which means you’ve got a nicer image in terms of keystoning and things like that. So the image, when you’re looking down at the handout or the textbook on your desk, is a lot better than it was before.

J.J.: Obviously you can point the camera out to read the board; you could also point it at the desk, as you say, to read?

RH: That’s right.

J.J.: Okay. How much is this going to cost and when is it going to come out?

RH: This one’s available also in April, so next month, and it’s $2,600.

J.J.: Okay, great. If people have more questions, they want to get more information, what’s the best way to do that?

RH: Oh, you know what, you just go to our website, which is sightenhancement.com, and all our contact information is up there.

J.J.: All right. Hey, thank you so much, Rob.

RH: Oh, you’re very welcome, J.J. Thanks.

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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