This is an image and soundscape of the royal village hotel in Goa. There are plants, and parts of the building.
Royalvillage
The Royal Village
Using a pin hole camera with the vOICe
I recently attended a workshop on alternative photography in Goa conducted by the center for alternative photography. A friend and I were the only blind participants in the workshop. The workshop is meant for sighted people. The workshop trained us to use pinhole cameras as opposed to digital cameras. Therefore, we were back to technology that was used probably in the previous century. You had no eyepiece, no flash no autofocus and no zoom. The cameras were cardboard boxes and we were using something called photo paper.
We also used cameras made out of matchboxes. They consisted of a matchbox that had a hole for the aperture. The inner tray of the matchbox had been hollowed out. There was one loaded canister of film on the left and an empty canister of film on the right. The canisters had roles of paper protruding from them. These were joined such that as you turn the filled canister, part of the film would roll onto the empty canister. There was a small piece of cardboard which I could move up and down to block and unblock the aperture.
The vOICe came in extremely handy. I was able to see what I was trying to photograph. So, I would first see what I was going to photograph using my mobile phone, then, pick up the camera, and do the needful. The trick of course was that I had to get the camera in the same position. Also, moving that piece of cardboard was a challenge but that was more because of my partially formed left palm than anything else. My instructors were extremely interested in the vOICe and, I took a good many digital shots. I have the same shots captured by the pinhole cameras. My subsequent posts will contain some of these pictures. The pinhole versions will be uploaded later.
I also had a chance to do developing in a dark room. I was wearing the video glasses at that time. There is light that emanates from these glasses so they cannot be used in a dark room.
Another Select City Walk experience
I took the vOICe out to the shopping mall (The Select City Walk) once again. This time, I made two changes to the configuration of my netbook. I set the power scheme to maximum performance and I used a program switch speed for windows xp to set it to maximize the performance of the netbook’s CPU. I made these changes after a discussion with Peter as a test. What was happening was that the vOICe would stop giving me input. It almost seemed to hang. Mind you, my netbook is an Asus eee pc with 512MB of ram running Windows XP pro sp2. The problem remains as in there are times when the vOICe stops giving me any output or, sometimes when it is giving me output and I try to access it’s menus, I cannot do so. Jaws v9 works ok but the vOICe seems to slow down.
However, the maximizing of the CPU’s usage helped though the battery was exhausted after about 2 hours.
1. I found it easier to distinguish doorways.
2. The tiles on the wall were clearly visible.
3. I could tell when we were looking at columns and pillars.
4. I had an aha moment when I saw a rectangular speaker. The rectangle was like the one in exercise mode. The same applies to circular speakers that were mounted on shelves.
5. I had a look at a lot of curios and other items including toy cars. The toy cars soundscapes reminded nme of what I used to see when using the vOICe on the road. This was logical.
6. We went to a restaurant and there was a buffet lunch. I tried looking at different food items but they all seemed to look the same.
7. I found a strange glass that had a short stem and a large bowl like structure where the water was filled. Think of it like a vine glass with a short stem and a very large glass. I sensed it as a flattish circle more like a bowl so I was unable to find it visually until my dad explained the shape of the glass to me.
8. looking at people was interesting. They often blocked the light and are quite squishy.
Pranav
A shopping mall experience
I went to one of the shopping malls here with the vOICe. Security did not bother me but then I would not read too much into that since a lot of the guards are poorly trained. I was able to distinguish a wall of the parking lot from other things such as cars and assorted motorbikes while looking out of the left side passenger window of my car. Once I was inside the mall, the first thing that hit me was the sporadic rendering of images. I initially thought it was the netbook and glasses but dismissed that theory since the equipment had been running without errors on route to the mall. It seems that many lights in the mall are not switched on so there are patches of light and shadow. The camera is a pinhole camera and this makes a huge difference in how much light the camera can handle. So, most of the items on the shelves were lit by spot lights so they came out ok but the isles between the shelves and the corridor containing shops on either side were a different story.
I had grand plans of trying to identify the shop boundaries but this does not seem to be possible due to the lack of light. For anyone navigating in this mall, you need to keep close to the shops since they are better lit. The escalators were badly lit so I could not make much out. Still, an interesting exercise would be to stand on an escalator and use perspective to anticipate when you will reach the next floor. This did not work again due to the lack of light.
People also looked less curved and since I was getting less visual information, I had some trouble with perspective.
I had a look at shelves filled with different kinds of bottles. Shelves with packets sound different but you need to watch out for shelf boundaries. They can be quite useful in demarking one set of items from another. I tried looking into a freezer that had cold cuts etc but no go since that freezer did not have much light.
I then had a look at some clothes. It is easy to distinguish trousers that are hung on shelves from shirts that have also been hung on shelves. Sometimes though garments are stacked on shelves which complicate things since all that one really senses are the shelf boundaries with some patterns of clothing. Mind you while at the juice bar, I looked into a counter containing a number of juicers. They had the same rhythm as that of the trousers that I had seen earlier.
I was able to identify the opening of the door into a trial room. I tried tracking when the trial room door opened and closed but I did not have too much success with this since I had to keep moving due to the number of people in that shop. Plus, keeping my head still at a fixed location with a boring door to look at became cumbersome.
I had to set the vOICe to double speed otherwise; it was not as responsive to scene changes as I needed it to be. I made no other changes from the default configuration.
First run with my new MINI DV D008 USB camera sunglasses
I finally got the glasses. Remember, if you ever want to ship to India, please use a couriering service such as UPS or if you need a less expensive option registered airmail.
My first experience was positive and I could immediately feel the clarity of the image. Yet, the soundscapes did not quite give me the expected shapes. Still, the camera worked and it was now time to put the epoxy or, in my case super glue. Before I did that though the glasses stopped working. I could see a LED glowing and this was detectable using my light probe. I tried plugging and unplugging the glasses from my computer and tried them on my netbook. No go. I then remembered Peter’s point about resetting the glasses. Finding a suitable pin and that little hole with the clickable reset switch was an adventure in itself. I reset the glasses and all was well again. I now have the following setup.
1. MINI DV D008 USB camera sunglasses,
2. An Asus EEE pc. This is one of the earlier models that have come with Windows XP. See the following link for a review.
http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/asus-eee-pc-4g/1707-3121_7-32466960.html
3. A Plantronics DSP400 headset.
I decided to try something simple for a change. Taking my key from some of Jacob’s posts I put some bottles and glasses on my dining table and tried moving them around. The bottles were taller than the glasses. I could sense the change in height but I had to bend my neck to really see the glasses. I tried positioning the bottles and glasses in different sequences. Something was still wrong since the soundscapes were not sounding the way I imagined them to sound. I then remembered that in my previous setup. I had had to tilt the view by 180 degrees to cater to the way the webcam was mounted. I now set the view rotation to 0 and all was well. I had hit shift+f1 to restore the vOICe to it’s best default settings but that had not changed the rotation. That is a very good design choice since you do not want the rotation reset every time you get the vOICe back to default settings. I repeated my old experiments and found it much easier to make sense of what was a bottle and what was a glass. Along the way, I discovered that I could increase the camera resolution to 600 by something. That was quite a lot of input and got uncomfortable fast. I now have the resolution set to a lower value which is 352 by 288 pixels.
I then moved to my driveway. My gate was clearly visible and I tried to experience perspective. This is going to take more work but things are improving. My garden was interesting. I seem to have some short plants or perhaps grass where I looked. Now, I have my Honda City parked on the left. As you go towards the gate, there is a small space between the side of the car and the wall. You need to walk through this space to reach the gate. So, I tried the experiment of finding that space using only vision and then walking without touching either the wall or the car. I then tried the experiment in reverse so I turned around such that the gate was behind me and tried going towards my house. The experiment was successful but I will need to start trusting my vision. I instinctively reached out to either side to ensure that I was on the right track. Before you ask, the blocking of all other sensory input was a conscious thing. I used no ear muffs or anything it was a matter of telling my brain to rely only on what the vOICe told it.
Next came the grand experiment. My dad asked me to get him a glass of water. He held the glass out towards me. I had seen a glass before so I got the side right but the height wrong. I then carried the filled glass of water back to him. I had toyed with the idea of looking at the water as I was pouring it but gave it up since bending down while tracking the positions of my hands and coordinating the glass and the bottle was too challenging. I filled the glass without mishap and took it back to my father. He held his fingers out for it and this time I got everything correct. However, judging height still needs more work.
A note about the startup sequence of the glasses The netbook that I have is very old and windows XP is not even at service pack 3. So, when I start the netbook, I must hit the power button of the glasses to switch them into camera mode. I can then launch the vOICe. If I do not do this, then I can keep hitting the power button and the glasses will sit there behaving like a drive. I have to reboot the netbook and switch to camera mode before doing anything else.
A video of a walk in the garden
See this Youtube video made by Dr. Meijer of another walk in his garden. The video supports closed captioning. This is not read by a screen reader so here is his description along with how far in terms of time the events occur in the video.
0: I walk across the terrace towards our neighbor’s house, with our own house of white bricks on the left side. Bright sky is at the top right.
10: a white garden chair shows briefly at the bottom left, and the tonality of the bright cement of the brick wall of our neighbor’s house becomes apparent as I walk towards it until it is within arm’s reach. Then I look left and right along the brick wall such that you get the changing rhythm rates associated with visual perspective.
37: then I take a closer look at the white garden chair, and pass it to walk towards a wooden fence, with a white football lying on the ground in front of it. The football gives a low-pitched beep while the wooden fence gives a slowing rhythm as I move closer.
1.08: I turn left to face the wall with white bricks of our own house, giving a more noisy texture with a tonality from the darker cement, and I move a bit closer to the wall.
1.25: I walk around a kind of white brick pillar at the corner of our house, and approach it from the side that has a rain pipe in the middle, and move up close and put my hand on the rain pipe.
1.55: I turn a bit left and take a close-up look at a red table cloth with white dots on a garden table. The many white dots give a peculiar sound texture.
2.12 I turn further left to take a closer look at a corner of our house, with windows on the left and right right side of the corner.
2.22: I turn left and walk over the grass to another wooden fence, giving a characteristic rhythm that slows down as I move closer.
2.33: Turning a bit to the right I take a look at some nearby foliage giving a kind of random texture.
2.45: Next I take a look at the roof with its regular pattern made up of the rows and columns of stone roof tiles.
3.06: I walk across the terrace to a white door in the fence that faces the street behind it.
3.31: I briefly turn right looking towards the white brick wall, and then turn left for a close-up look at some other foliage, and turn further left to effectively make a U-turn after facing another brick wall.
3.58: Then walking back across the terrace I turn to the right to have a close-up look at an empty rabbit’s cage, which here gives a characteristic simultaneous tonality and rhythm at close range, corresponding to a rectangular metal wire pattern.
4.08: I walk further across the terrace to take a second look at the white brick pillar with the rain pipe, again putting my hand on the rain pipe at close range.
4.38: end of video clip.
A walk in the garden experience
This is a description of a walk that Dr. Peter Meijer the creator of the vOICe took on one of the first days of spring 2010. Note the description of texture. It is these kinds of descriptions that provide an insite to what can be experienced using the vOICe.
“Hi All,
Today was the first really beautiful Spring day in The Netherlands, with lovely sunshine and an ideal temperature, and I decided to go outside in my garden at home wearing The vOICe with camera glasses.
Of course I am not blind, but it was an excellent occasion to get a sense of what is possible in a realistic (safe, home) environment.
I found it very enjoyable to be able to hear all the rich textures.
The brick wall of our neighbor’s house is up made of relatively dark stones with brighter cement, and the cement pattern thereby gave the very characteristic dense tonality of many horizontal lines. The brick wall of our own house is made up of white bricks with darker cement, also giving a tonality, but now with the added “white” noise.
A curious rise in pitch in this tonal sound took a second for me to realize that it was the shadow of our neighbor’s house cast on our white brick wall. Since one cannot touch shadows, such “anomalies”
would initially confuse blind users. Looking at the roof I heard the regular pattern made up of the rows and columns of stone roof tiles, at a slanted orientation and tapered due to visual perspective.
Looking down, the grass gave a smoother sounding texture than the stone gravel tiles of my terrace. Along the white brick wall I could hear the interruptions by the windows, with their wooden lining and horizontal and vertical “spokes”. Also very nice was the “V shape”
that I heard when looking at a corner of our house, as it was caused by the effect of visual perspective on the wooden window lining of the windows on both sides of the corner: quite helpful to know that one is looking at a corner. Our wooden fence gave a characteristic strong rhythm, and the foliage gave different types of swirly sounds for the somewhat random twigs, branches and leaves. The rich variation in textures made it fairly easy to know in which direction I was looking and where I was relative to the various structures. Distance could to some extent also be judged from the appearance of the visual textures.
I know that many (sighted) people dislike the sounds of The vOICe, but here the soundscapes did not bother me at all. It is as if the rich visual feedback provided by them for me suppresses that negative aspect. I once compared this phenomenon to learning to read, where at some point you enjoy a beautiful story or poem no matter how ugly the font is with which it is printed – you just don’t really “see”
the font anymore.
Anyway, just sharing today’s personal experience, and other people would undoubtedly have other experiences and opinions.
Best wishes,
Peter Meijer”