Blind Bargains

#CSUN15 Audio: Join The Revolution With an All-in-one CCTV and Android Tablet from North State AT


Cory Hanosh from North State AT tells us about a revolutionary new product, aptly named the Revolution. This device functions as a CCTV, with the unique addition of an Android tablet serving as a touch screen and providing access to the Google Play Store and more. A basic and professional version of the device exist, and the best way to learn more is to call the company toll free at (877) 682-0452. You can also visit the North State AT website but note that at the time of this recording it is still under construction.

Be sure to check our audio page for more exhibit hall coverage, and check out our new weekly podcast for news and features about technology and beyond. Blind Bargains audio coverage of CSUN 2015 is generously sponsored by the American Foundation for the Blind. Enjoy our Podcasts? You can help us out by taking this very short survey.

Transcript

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

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Transcribed by Kayde Rieken

Welcome to BlindBargains.com coverage of CSUN 2015 — the biggest names, provocative interviews, and wall-to-wall exhibit hall coverage — brought to you by the American Foundation for the Blind.

VisionAware.org is a free, easy-to-use website for adults with vision problems. If you're having trouble seeing and don't know where to turn for answers, VisionAware provides you with expert solutions and advice. Learn about your eye condition. Get practical advice for working with vision loss. Discover how to keep doing all the things you love to do. Find help, hope, and connection at VisionAware.org.

Now, here's Joe Steinkamp.

Joe Steinkamp: Hey, everyone. Back here in the gigantic exhibit hall on Thursday, so it's a little quieter back here. And I - I needed that quietness because I've got an amazing thing to share with you guys from North State Assistive Technology. And it's — it's revolutionary — wait, no. It's the Revolution, huh, Cory?

Cory Hanosh: (Laughs) Yeah. Absolutely is. Thanks, Joe.

JS: Not a problem.

CH: So what we have here is the — the Revolution.

JS: Mm-hmm.

CH: And it's an all-in-one living machine. And really, what we were trying to do was to get something so that somebody wouldn't have to kind of go all over their home and find all the assistive devices that they have over the years.

JS: Right.

CH: So what we have is the kind of Acrobat style, where the camera sits over the top of the unit. You can — it's a three-in-one camera, so you can do distance viewing, tabletop viewing, and self-viewing.

JS: Right.

CH: So it's a fully-featured CCTV. It's high-definition, 720P, very clear image, all of the bells and whistles that you would expect — line markers and masking, freeze image, focus lock — all that good stuff.

JS: Yeah, but there's something else about it that's really cool.

CH: You know, what — what makes it unique is, we actually have a toggle button on the front of the screen, and that actually — the screen is a — a 22-inch Android tablet computer. Yes, you heard it right: It's a tablet computer. What that allows us to do is, we have an application called Page Reader. We activate that, and it actually activates a secondary camera that flips out from the side. Anything underneath that camera's going to be presented on the screen; and all I have to do is simply touch the screen ...

[A camera shutter sound is heard, and a synthesized voice indicates that the image is being processed.]

CH: Take a picture. Within seven to ten seconds, it start reading.

[The device begins reading some garbled letters and numbers.]

CH: As it picks up, of course, something else off the screen.

[The device begins reading understandable text, which appears to be a product brochure.]

CH: As you can see, the — or hear, the —

JS: Yeah.

CH: — the voice is quite clear.

JS: Yep.

CH: We have about ten different voices that you can choose from, both male and female. You can change the color contrasts while it is captured in that. You can pinch to zoom while it's captured so that you can increase the text and follow along with it as it's reading to you.

JS: And you're doing all this in realtime on the fly as we're in a document moving around, and you're manipulating that with pinch and zoom and just simple finger presses on the screen to be able to go ahead and start that automatic reading mode.

CH: Absolutely. Now, if you don't want to touch the screen, if you have a wireless mouse connected to it, you can use your scroll wheel to increase and decrease the zoom, and you can use your left mouse — or — yeah, left mouse button —

JS: Right.

CH: — to maneuver it around and select where you want it to start reading from. So there's a lot of different ways that you can actually utilize the device.

JS: And keyboard support as well is — from what you were saying.


CH: Absolutely, yeah. You can put a ZoomText keyboard to it or a Keys-U-See wireless keyboard solution.

JS: So you have a large-print keyboard to go with your new video magnifier that is running on Android. And what — what version of Android is this, by the way?


CH: It's actually 4 — 4.2, Kit-Kat, I believe, is the one that we're running.

JS: Yeah. Okay.

CH: So the nice thing, again, is you have the accessibility that's built into the — the Android system.

JS: Right.

CH: You can do the magnification; you can do the TalkBack. One other thing — or a couple other things —

JS: Yeah.

CH: You can actually save documents into the Page Reader for recall later.

JS: Okay.

CH: It simply processes it quickly like it does, starts reading it right back to you. But more importantly — and where this one differs from all the other ones that are out on the market that does text-to-speech and have live mode — is you have access to all of the computer capability that we have in this tablet computer. You can do Internet. You can do email. You can —

JS: Apps from the app store.

CH: Oh, any app. It's crazy how many free apps are out there that you can actually download and do whatever the heck you want.

JS: Yeah.

CH: You know, a lot of people don't realize that you can actually do a Word document, an Excel spreadsheet, or even a PowerPoint presentation on the Android system.

JS: Right.

CH: But it comes with free software to be able to do that. And the beauty is that you actually save it in a .doc file or a .xls file; so you can transfer that over to somebody else's PC, and you guys can work together on that. Or, if you want, you can get on the Google Drive and do Google Docs and work together simultaneously on devices — or on the — the spreadsheets and such.

JS: But not split-screen. So —

CH: Not split-screen.

JS: Not split-screen. But there is memory on board. You were saying 16 gigs?

CH: 16 gigabytes on board.

JS: Right.

CH: It also has an SD card slot —

JS: For expansion.

CH: — so you can actually add more as well. Or, if you really want a big hard drive, you can connect, through the USB, an external hard drive; and you can have as much as you want. Or you can use Dropbox or some other online storage —

JS: Yeah. Like you were saying, Google — Google Drive —

CH: Yeah. Absolutely.

JS: — which is another way of doing that kind of thing.

CH: Mm-hmm.

JS: And you get lots of gigs there.

CH: Yeah.

JS: Now, you were saying there were multiple configurations of this at different price points.

CH: Yeah. What we have is kind of the professional version, which has everything. It has the live mode CCTV or video magnifier; it has the tablet computer; and it has the text-to-speech. That retails out at $3,695. Now, when you look at some of the other ones that just have the video magnifier and the text-to-speech — like the ClearView C — that's $3,995.

JS: Right.

CH: So what's great is you're actually getting that computer connectivity almost for free.

JS: Yeah. Yeah.

CH: But we also have another version. If text-to-speech isn't your thing — you don't need it yet — we have just the tablet computer and the live mode at $2,995. And you know what? You can upgrade the text-to-speech later. If you don't need it now and you want to get, you know, just under that 3,000-dollar price point, you can do that, and we can upgrade it later for you.

JS: Cool. So an upgrade path. That's awesome. And then there's a third one you were mentioning?

CH: Not sure. (Laughs)

JS: Okay. Maybe — maybe I was forgetting.

CH: I think there was only two.

JS: Yeah, maybe — maybe it was. Maybe I — hey, it's late in the day. It's late in the day.

CH: (Laughs)

JS: Now, what's the weight on the unit? I mean, we're talking about something that — that is just the monitor, and it doesn't take up a lot of space; so you — no X-Y table or anything like that. So a lot of your free-standing units are like that.

CH: Yep.

JS: But the weight on this? And does it run completely on a battery?

CH: It's about 23 pounds.

CH: Okay.

JS: It does not have a battery.

JS: Okay.

CH: So it does require a single plug into the wall.

JS: Okay.

CH: But other than that, it — you can get the optional roller bag carry case for it; so if you need to take it somewhere — but again, there's a handle on the back of it —

JS: Okay.

CH: — small form factor. If you need to move it around the house or between home and office —

JS: Right.

CH: — certainly capable of doing that.

JS: What about updates to the software that we're using, the proprietary software that's allowing us to do the touch-reading and all of that?

CH: You know, Joe, I'm glad you asked me that because that's the key. That's the — that's the awesome part of this. Since we're on the Google Play store with the device, we've already had four different updates come through —

JS: Excellent.

CH: — adding more functionality to what we can do with the text-to-speech. And you know what? It's free.

JS: Perfect.

CH: It actually pushes out to your — you know, your tablet; and all you have to do is accept that update, and it comes through to you. So you're getting the latest version of the software all the time.

JS: Fantastic. So there's a lot of features we're not even really touching on here, but they can go to the website to find out more. Where is that website, and how can they contact you about this, Cory?

CH: Well, I would rather them call me on the 800 number because I'm getting my website updated.

JS: Oh, there you go.

CH: But I'm going to give it to you just in case for now.

JS: Okay. Well, you know, people might listen a couple months from now —

CH: Absolutely.

JS: — so you might be there.

CF: So the website is NorthStateAT.com.

JS: Uh-huh.

CH: And that's NorthStateAT.com. NorthStateAT.com. And you can always call me direct at (877) 682-0452.

JS: Mm-hmm. Excellent. Well, thank you for showing me this device. And it is very new and very, dare I say, revolutionary.

CH: (Laughs)

JS: Without Prince, of course. And so definitely check this out on the website because the audio is not going to do it justice, especially to be able to see how some of the features work in realtime and to see how it is. And we're — we're under a very nice bright light; but I imagine that lighting is not so bad for this unit, and it works in — in some low-level light conditions.

CH: You know, we have a couple integrated light sources on it.

JS: Okay.

CH: For the — the live mode camera, there's actually an LED shining down under the table —

JS: Perfect.

CH: — helping for illumination and then under the text-to —

JS: As well as targeting to be able to know where you are on the page. Right.

CH: Yep. Yep. And then also, the — the text-to-speech has built-in LEDs as well, so —

JS: Okay. So that answers that question as far as what kind of demo conditions we were on. And he was actually scanning on a bright white table, which is sometimes not a good thing for other cameras that have tried this in the past. So just if you're trying to get an idea of what the demo conditions were like on the audio side of things, so —

CH: You know, one — can I mention one other thing?

JS: Sure. Uh-huh.

CH: One thing that we've actually looked at with — especially with the veterans.

JS: Mm-hmm.

CH: You know, a lot of them are coming back with polytraumas.

JS: Right.

CH: Visual issues —

JS: Right.

CH: — and also traumatic brain or speech pathology issues, something in that regard. Now that we have opened up that tablet computer side of things, we're actually working with the VA to be able to engage not only visually, but also cognitively because, again, there's apps for that.

JS: Sure.

CH: Where, if you have a senior that's kind of losing some — some memory, there's memory games that they can download to help, you know, really kind of freshen that brain up a little bit. So you're also — you know, your CCTV is now working your brain a little bit more as well. So I just wanted to mention that as well.

JS: Well, and — and something we mentioned before we started the recording was, there's also voice dictation because of the way that Google works with Google search and the like. So you also have that as well to do some form of dictation for —

CH: Yep.

JS: — simple text entry, which would play a lot into the scenario you just described.

CH: Absolutely. It's endless. It's amazing, some of the stuff that's just kind of come up out of — as we put this thing together.

JS: That is amazing, is right. And so again — I'll say again: Almost revolutionary, if not the Revolution.

CH: (Laughs)

JS: And available from NorthStateAT.com, so definitely check that out. Thank you for your time, Cory. I appreciate it.

CH: Thanks, Joe. Thank you much.

JS: For Blind Bargains here in — wow, I almost said Orlando. I'm already getting ahead of myself, six months from now. Here at — I've done too many of these things — San Diego — it has an O in it — I'm Joe Steinkamp.

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Blind Bargains audio coverage is presented by the AT Guys, online at 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 AT Guys. Copyright 2015.


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Joe Steinkamp is no stranger to the world of technology, having been a user of video magnification and blindness related electronic devices since 1979. Joe has worked in radio, retail management and Vocational Rehabilitation for blind and low vision individuals in Texas. He has been writing about the A.T. Industry for 15 years and podcasting about it for almost a decade.


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