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#ATIA15 Audio: Introducing the Smart Beetle Braille Display and the Blaze ET from Hims


The Smart Beetle is a new 14-cell braille display from Hims, so-named because it can connect simultaneously to up to six devices at a time. Dave Wilkinson, Regional Sales Manager for Hims, joins us to talk about the new display as well as a preview for the new Blaze ET digital media player. He also addresses the recent delays in obtaining NLS support for the Blaze line. We've got many more interviews from ATIA 2015, so be sure to check our audio page for these as well as our new weekly podcast, featuring the latest in technology and beyond.

Transcript

We strive to provide an accurate transcription, though errors may occur.

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Joe Steinkamp: Hey everyone! Before we get into the interview in question, I just want to remind you that we have a weekly show at Blind Bargains going on. You can find that in our app on IOS or Android or you can find that on the Blind Bargains site. And now, interviews from ATIA 2015.

Announcer: Welcome to blindbargains.com coverage of ATIA 2015 featuring the latest and greatest in assistive technology and beyond! Now direct from Orlando, here’s J.J. Meddaugh!

JJ: We’re here at ATIA 2015 in Orlando with Dave Wilkinson. He’s a regional sales manager for HIMS and this time he’s on the Blind Bargains podcast to talk about a new Braille Display. It’s not a new Braille EDGE Dave?

Dave: No.

JJ: Tell us about what we have here.

Dave: No it’s a 14 cell Braille Display that’s called the Smart Beetle; it’s being introduced for the first time here at ATIA. It’s sort of pre-beta. The Smart Beetle’s name is if you think about a beetle, you got 6 legs and each of those legs represents one of the simultaneous connections that you can have on the Smart Beetle. So you could have this hooked up to your Mac, your PC, your iPhone, your iPad, your Galaxy and maybe another iPhone simultaneously and just flip between screens. So you’ve got 6 devices that you have hooked up, so you could be sitting at your computer and if you’re wanting to text on your iPhone, just hit a button combination and flip over to your iPhone and flip back over to the computer. So the 6 simultaneous connections; 5 Bluetooth and 1 USB are where we came up with the beetle and of course it’s smart because it’s smart.

JJ: So we have this sitting right here in front of us and…

Dave: Sure.

JJ: ..describe it, of course you have the actual display; 14 cells in the front and a button either side of it.

Dave: Right which are scroll buttons.

JJ: Okay and above that you have the cursor nav,

Dave: Right you got all the cursor routers,

JJ: Above that, there’s 2 buttons on the left and 2 buttons on the right that are rectangular in shape.

Dave: Right, those are the same type of function keys that you would find on the U2 products or if you took four of the function keys off of the Braille EDGE then you would have sort of the same idea. So you’ve got two function keys on either side of the spacebar and those functions keys work in a number of different manner depending on what platform you’re using. They’re going to work as the U2 function keys would work when you’re using this in conjunction with a computer, an IOS device or an Android device. By themselves, when you’re trying to access different operations on the Smart Beetle, you use the function keys in conjunction with the power button to do things like initialize Bluetooth pairing when you’ve got one device paired to set up another device. You use the function keys to initialize USB versus Bluetooth et cetera. So they’ve got a number of different functions.

JJ: So far that’s one of the biggest ideas of this is the idea of switching between devices which is a new concept in Braille displays over the past year or so. How long does it take to go between one—like say from a computer PC to a Mac or to an iPhone or Android or…

Dave: A half second maybe. I mean it’s virtually instantaneous; you hit the power button and the right scroll button. And the scroll buttons are just down at the end of the Braille display, very much like where you would find the scroll buttons on the U2 or the Braille EDGE except for there’s one scroll button on each end instead of two and just hit the power button and the right scroll button and you flip from screen to screen.

JJ: So how does this technically work? You have one device, you pair it, does it automatically give it slot 1 or do you say I want to pair to the first slot and then if you want to bring another device in, it will go to the next slot, how does it work?

Dave: Keep in mind that this is pre-beta so at the moment, it’s just doing it in the order that you pair them. And whether we will change that for the final iteration, I really couldn’t speak to.

JJ: Okay. Well obviously any modern device—it’s going to work, it’s the same type of drivers that the Braille EDGE and the other Hims products are using.

Dave: Right.

JJ: So the ones that are already supporting it outside of having to perhaps readjust for 14 cells versus 40 or…

Dave: Right, it’s going to be the same—same basic deal, that’s right.

JJ: Alright, so that’s the front of it—not many ports right because it’s mostly Bluetooth.

Dave: It’s mostly Bluetooth, you’ve got a USB micro port on the back, you’ve got a power button on the right hand side and then you have a reset button on the back left hand side. And that is pretty much it for controls.

JJ: Sure and the micro USB of course doubles as charging as well.

Dave: Right.

JJ: Okay, what’s--the battery life has been talked about on this thing, it seems like it’s a…

Dave: The battery life is 24 hours from 100% to 0. You’ve got a—believe it’s about a 4 hour charging time. Obviously if you’re using this in conjunction with a device that’s using USB, you’ll be able to charge while you’re using it. So you’ll have this happening simultaneously.

JJ: Sure there’s a couple others in competition, we mentioned the VarioUltra does a lot of that, multi-devicing but it’s a 40 cell. We have this and the other 14 cells and 12 cells, you know the BrailePen and the Focus. So what is some of the advantages that you would say this has over those?

Dave: The biggest advantages are going to be the sheer connectivity. The fact that you can connect to 6 devices simultaneously, if you look at our competitors, they can connect to either one or two depending on if they're doing Bluetooth or Bluetooth and USB. So you’ve got multiple devices, the price point is certainly going to be good. You’re not paying any more for the additional connectivity. The other thing that we offer which some folks may find useful is you can also use the Braille keyboard as a full keyboard emulator. So that if you want to use this as essentially a Bluetooth keyboard, there are keystrokes to fill in for any of the keystrokes that you’d be able to use on a full sized keyboard. And a time this would be advantageous is that if you’re using a screen reader that doesn’t support contracted Braille entry such as Window-Eyes or NVDA, you can actually write in contracted Braille on the Smart Beetle and it will work fine with those screen readers. Also if you’re working in another country where you’ve got IOS translation device issues with some of the other languages--we were talking about Japanese the other day, how IOS doesn’t always handle Japanese in the best way that it could. You could use our keyboard emulator, you’re going to be able to write it the way you want and it’s going to come out properly.

JJ: How would you translate or input some of the multi key commands and say you wanted to do like Ctrl+Alt+z, how…

Dave: That’s when you’re going to start using these function keys in conjunction with your Perkins keyboard.

JJ: So there’s just different combinations that will make most of the common ones...

Dave: Right, right and you’ll be able to use key mapping as you would with anything.

JJ: Right, sure and that makes a lot of sense—you look at the commands, there’s lots of Bluetooth key commands with voiceover between Quick Nav and some of the others. So you have the ability to put all those extra keys and make all that work. It certainly seems like it will be a plus.

Dave: Absolutely. And just to preemptively answer a question that some folks are thinking of out there, even if you’re using this as a keyboard, it’s not—you’re not saying at that point that you can’t use it as a Braille display, you can use it simultaneously as a Bluetooth keyboard and as a Braille display. And if you’re not using the Bluetooth keyboard function, you still have the Braille display entry commands that you would have with any Braille display.

JJ: Okay and you mentioned the price point, how much is the price going to be?
Dave: Price is $1,295. If you get it with the carrying case which is going to be a form fitting case, it will be $1,349 which is still pretty much exactly where the competition is. We are selling the case separately, if you buy the Smart Beetle and then later on decide you want the case, it’s going to cost you probably like around 69 bucks. So you want to buy the case at the time that you buy the Smart Beetle if you’re going to get the case.

JJ: Is that an executive product’s case?

Dave: We are—there inevitably will be an executive’s product case. The case that we’re looking on at the moment is one that we’re designing as well.

JJ: Okay, what is the unit way?

Dave: Unit ways... something.

JJ: It’s very light.

Dave: It is very light.

JJ: Just a few ounces right?

Dave: Yeah, I mean can sit here and look it up.

JJ: No, it’s very light.

Dave: It’s very light and very durable. I think one of the things that you will find is compared to some of the other small Braille displays; it’s a very solid rugged feeling unit. You don’t feel like you’ve picked up something from the dollar bin.

JJ: That’s true. That’s a plastic case and it seems like it’s certainly…

Dave: It’s a tough plastic case.

JJ: I’m tapping the back of it, there’s some durability. I won’t drop test it.

Dave: I’d probably appreciate that.

JJ: So there you go, this is the Smart Beetle.

Dave: (sings) Smart Beetle!

JJ: Make it into a ring tone; I’ve already suggested that you make that into a ring tone.

Dave: It’s alright, it’s—poor coworkers have to live with this everyday.

JJ: Sure, absolutely. One more thing to talk about quickly, I know it’s a brand new thing that you’re kind of showing the prototype of it here but there’s been a bit of talk about a new addition to the Blaze series; the Blaze ET.

Dave: There is indeed a new addition to the Blaze series, the Blaze ET. Again, I would emphasize that this is pre-beta but we—it was ready where we thought to the point that we could at least show it and get some additional feedback and so we did bring it to ATIA. The primary differences between it and the Blaze EZ are that the ET does have a number pad, so that if you’re trying to enter things in like authentification keys for wireless networks, you don’t have to use arrows to go left or right, you can just use the T9 method. And also it does have a built in dictionary and unlike anything else that’s out there the digital talking book readers, our dictionary isn’t going to require you to have a Wi-Fi setup, it’s just going to be built on board.

JJ: Someone mentioned a Skype?

Dave: There are some possibilities along those lines that have not been finalized.

JJ: Okay. It was in the press release so it wasn’t sure…

Dave: Right. There’s some possibilities along those lines…

JJ: It was either there or is in the ATIA session description little encapsulation thing.

Dave: Let’s leave it at this, there are a number of things that you’ll be able to do with that camera.

JJ: Sure, well and having the keypad like you said there are probably some things that it wouldn’t be practical to deal with the current easy setup.

Dave: It’s going to be really easy to download books from book services like from Bookshare and Bard. It’s going to be a lot easier than if you’re just using arrow keys going back and forth. One of the other things that you can do with this is you can move files, you can copy files, cut files, zip files, unzip files—so you can have a lot of file control with it as well. And it has some little things; it has a calculator, it has an alarm clock. So it’s just sort of a fuller, richer version for folks who want more features.

JJ: Okay. I’m guessing given the initial launch of the Blaze, you’re probably going to be real hesitant to commit to an exact release date but do you have an idea yet or…?

Dave: It will be coming some time; that I’m confident of.

JJ: Any idea on pricing yet?

Dave: Price is going to be $795.

JJ: Okay, so really not that much more than the original. The other one is about $749—it goes on sale a lot but…

Dave: Right, it’s been the promo price of $695 has been in effect. I do want to emphasize that this not a saleable item at this point. We’re not taking orders; we’re nowhere near that point.

JJ: Sure, okay. People have been asking a little bit about the EZ-How is the NLS support and some of the other features of that coming along.

Dave: Here’s what’s happening with the NLS support and I think it’s fair to say ahead of time that if we’d had idea that NLS support was going to take so phenomenally long, we would have never released products when we released it. A little bit of sort of background and history on what’s happening with the NLS support. HIMS has provided all information requested of us to folks at the National Library Service. A significant portion of the hold up is because this is a new platform, the Blaze products are operating on the Android platform. There has never been an NLS authorized Android device. There were a number of issues that were raised as a result of that, that HIMS has taken care of whenever asked for additional like security precautions that are a part of NLS. But the process simply is moving at the speed that’s going to move which is being dictated by NLS. And that’s not an attempt to shift blame but it’s simply we have provided everything that we have been asked for and we have provided it immediately. So I am confident that we finally, finally, finally have NLS in the extraordinarily near future. I cannot commit to a day because as soon as I say it will be X date and it doesn’t happen, my phone will light up but it is coming. We are doing everything we can to make this happen as quickly as humanly possible and we do realize that this has been very difficult for a lot of our customers and for us.

JJ: Sure and I guess that once that comes along, you can move ahead on some other features—with the BookSense there was lots and lots of free updates to it. I would expect the same for this.

Dave: And there will be for years. I mean that’s part of the beauty of Wi-Fi as you can just download your updates but I don’t think it’s any big secret that we really probably all wish that we had waited a little bit on this. We really, really thought that we were much, much, much closer to NLS authorization than it turned out we were. And frankly, I think the folks at NLS thought it was going to be much quicker.

JJ: Sure fair enough. If you want to get more information about the new products, what’s the best way to do that?

Dave: You can always give us a call at 888-520-4467. You can email us at info@hims-inc.com, if you want to make sure that you’re getting in touch with a specific individual, you are also welcome to email me Dave at dave@hims-inc.com. And we’ll see you at other shows coming up in the future, so be on the look out for us.

JJ: Thank you so much Dave, it’s been a pleasure.

Dave: Thank you.

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Copyright 2015

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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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