Speaker 0 00:00:04 <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:00:35 Disability and progress. We'd bring you insights into ideas about and discussions on disability topics. This is cafe 90.3, FM Minneapolis and kpi.org. My name is Sam. I'm the host of this show. Thanks so much for tuning in. Thanks for Mason Butler for engineering, Charlene dolls, my research team. Thank you. Charlene Aliza. Oh, Olynyk is our <inaudible> guest today and we are speaking about or cam and Elisa is the area sales manager for the, um, lakes region of the Midwest for or cam technologies. Hello, Elisa. How are you there? Thank you for having me on again. It's been awhile. I know it seems like it's been so long since we've seen each other. Well, it's been so long since we've seen everybody. Well, that's true. This is true, but I'm glad that you've been good enough to come on again for us and, um, to talk about OrCam and what it is, and, um, some good things about that.
Speaker 1 00:01:39 Uh, can you start out by please giving us some history and how you came to Orkambe? Absolutely. Um, so how I came to OrCam, I was just absolutely in the right place at the right time with a very open mind, um, we, the company was, was just launching the product, the product, and I was looking for something different to do that was meaningful. That was, that was just completely different. And, um, and I met the right people. It was, it was really a matter of timing for me with, or Kim. And I have been lucky enough to, to be able to grow with the company. I've been lucky enough to be able to help grow the company. And I've really been lucky enough to, to keep meeting new people, but also to keep having the same relationships and meeting people that have, that have been with us the entire time. You know, I was kind of thinking about the timeline, Sam, look, when I met you, I can trace that back to when I met Charlene. Um, I can't remember if you introduced me to Charlene or Charlene introduced me to you and you guys also introduced me to other people in the community. You guys were here with us from the beginning and part of,
Speaker 2 00:03:12 Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:03:13 Part of the excitement. That's amazing.
Speaker 2 00:03:15 I didn't think of it that way, but that really is true. And it really is often all a matter of the right time and the right place. I can't tell you how many times it can be a wrong time in the wrong place too, but it was the right time in the right place. So start out. Um, I'm glad to see that you're still with Orkambe technologies. Talk about what OrCam is. Just give us a basic answer, answer. What, what is OrCam
Speaker 1 00:03:43 Okay, so it's, it's, it's not so basic, it's kind of a long answer, but I will give the gist of it is that it is, it is a, it's really a personal assistant. It's a tiny device that sits on your glasses. It's a device that is now about as big as my thumb, which is changed, right? Yes. It really has changed. Um, I'll, I'll talk about the, the device today. And also I'll talk about the, the history, you know, where we are now. So now it is a tiny device, the size of my thumb, and it uses a program called optical character recognition, which is a program that, that transcribes text to speech and the device sits and talks to you. So it doesn't matter what is, or is not going on with your vision. Um, and you can be totally blind. You can have, you can have perfect mission and have dyslexia.
Speaker 1 00:04:47 If you cannot see or process text, this device is going to do it for you. And it's going to do it for you in real time, quickly, accurately, um, and discreetly, you can connect the, the, the device to Bluetooth. So that, you're the only one who hears it, but it's this little device that sits right next to your ear on a pair of glasses. And it talks to you. It's not connected to the internet. It's totally private. Um, so it talks to you, it, it lets, you know, what's going on. It will read you any printed text on any surface. It recognizes faces. It recognizes products that recognize as colors, money, and, um, those are the features that we have and barcodes. Um, these are the features that we've had in the device for a long time and they keep getting better and better and giving people more and more accurate, fast information. Um, but I, what were you going to say? I
Speaker 2 00:05:58 Think there's a, a handheld one, two, is that correct?
Speaker 1 00:06:02 Absolutely. I'm going to talk about that in a second. What we've been doing during COVID. Um, so this, this device has a brand new feature that we call smart reading and the smart reading. Um, I like to think of this sort of an offline Alexa, so you can tap on the device. And instead of, instead of now having to search for what you want it to read, which is really simple before camp, I don't want to dismiss, um, how simple it is even without the smart reading, but with the smart reading, you can tell the device to be very specific. So say you're reading a newspaper and you want to know the headlights. You don't want to read everything or try and jump around to figure out what you're reading. You can tell the device, read me the headlights, and it will read you the headlines that it sees.
Speaker 1 00:06:57 And then you can decide what you want to hear. You want to hear about the weather. You can say re and that was the second article. Read me the second article. And it will read you the second article. If you're looking at one of your bills and you don't want to read the entire bill, you just want to know when it's due. How much do I owe? And, uh, Oh, they messed up. What's a phone number that I can call and tell them that they blew it and they need to fix my bill. Um, you can be really specific. Read me the phone numbers, read me the amounts, read me the date. Do say you go into a restaurant. You can, instead of searching the whole menu, which is doable. Sometimes we want to know everything. You know, that all you want is a vegetarian menu. You can say, read me the vegetarian options, or
Speaker 2 00:07:50 Hold on just a minute. So I want to ask some things about the, my read. So, but, um, so I will start out with saying, okay, so you can do this, but do you have to, you must have to scan stuff in first.
Speaker 1 00:08:07 Nope. Not at all. There's no, there's no scanning. What you do is you hold you hold your text that you want it to read in front of you. So your menu, your bill, whatever it is, you tap the device. Two times. You wait for a beep and you say smart reading. And then that device knows that it, you want it to very quickly read everything for you. So very quickly it reads. Then you can start just giving it these commands.
Speaker 2 00:08:36 You have to tap it each time that you want to give it a command.
Speaker 1 00:08:40 You have to tap it. You have to tap it each time you want to scan something different. So, and it's just a very quick tap. You can tell it, you can tell it what to do within, within, um, the parameters of what you told it to look for. But if you want it to look for something else, he just have to say restart smart reading.
Speaker 2 00:09:05 So that's, uh, that can be like, for instance, in the paper, a lot of stuff, um, you'd have to know what page like something is on. Um, but it must scan pretty quickly, or it must look pretty quickly when you're looking at it. How quick can it find something? Let's say you have a page of stuff in front of you, and there's an article towards the bottom. It's a full page of whatever. Um, how quickly can it go to that?
Speaker 1 00:09:39 Um, in a matter of seconds, it, it reads a lot and computes a lot faster than we do because it's machine learning.
Speaker 2 00:09:48 And this is the one that sits on the glasses, right?
Speaker 1 00:09:52 This is the one that sits on the glasses. It is also the one, the handheld it's it's available in the handheld will tell us about that
Speaker 2 00:10:01 Between the handheld and the one that sits on the glasses.
Speaker 1 00:10:04 Absolutely. So during COVID, um, we launched a whole new product. Um, the device that sits on the glasses is wonderful and it's tiny. And it's discreet. What we heard from people is that, you know what, not all of us need tiny and discreet. Some of us need w we just need to process text, and it doesn't need to be so tiny. We can hold something in our hand and we can push this button and we still want it to go with us. We still want the full power of the OCR that Orkambe offers, but we can use something that is more simple. Um, and so during COVID or cam launched what we call the Orkambe read. So the Orkambe read looks like, looks like a pen sized or camp. So the, the, the headboard one is the size of my thumb. And the Orkambe read is about as big as a fat Sharpie.
Speaker 1 00:11:13 Okay. So, or regular size Sharpie, if you put two of them together, that's about how big it is and you hold it in your hand, it has a camera on the end, and it has a circular button toward the top of the device. And what you do is you just point the Orkambe read at what you want it to read, and it will read it to you. And that's it. So for instance, for a child sitting in school, struggling with dyslexia, ah, yes, right now, if they need to read a whole page, they would either have to leave the room and scan it on a big, or take out their phone and scan it. They would have to go through a whole process. Whereas with the Orkambe rate, it's going to, it's going to read you an entire page at a time by simply shining a laser on what you want it to read. Or you can also isolate there is a laser on the device that can make a box and you can adjust the size of that box by simply by simply moving the device closer or farther away from your page. And you can isolate exactly what you want it to read to you. And it's going to read it to you in real time, quickly, accurately. And, and it can go right into your ear with a pair of ear buds.
Speaker 2 00:12:39 Can the glasses do this exact thing too?
Speaker 1 00:12:43 So the glass, so the one that you wearing your glasses, it does not have a laser, uh, razor, excuse me, a laser. What it has is the ability to look for your finger. So, so you can, the one on the glasses, you can either point to what you want it to read to you. Yes. And if you can feel it, you can point to it. Um, you know, you don't have to know exactly where it is. You could reach out and touch it, but you can also, if you know where your, where your text is, you can tap it. You can, it, you can look
Speaker 2 00:13:23 At it, tap it and look at it.
Speaker 1 00:13:25 Yep. You tap it and look at it. And you can also give it a vocal command. Now, with the smart reading. Now
Speaker 2 00:13:32 You say, look at it. Does it see where your eyes are looking and to, to determine, or is it where your head's facing?
Speaker 1 00:13:39 So it's, it's, it's where your head is facing. And I always like to tell people, um, either think of it as, as the device, um, is to two eyes with 2020 vision, and think of it as kind of lights, like going out from your eyes. And that's, that's where you want your text to be, or also just let it follow your nose.
Speaker 2 00:14:08 Okay. Uh, can we, I want to stay on the glasses a little bit. Um, tell me about what the glasses look like. What are your choices? Can you, do you have to have a certain type of glasses? Can you put them on anything you want?
Speaker 1 00:14:22 So yes, it comes with a pair of glasses that are, that are black. Um, they look really on most people, um, they're, they're becoming, but you do not have to use these glasses. Um, we just send these blesses along for people who don't have glasses or people who just want to use these glasses. There's no prescription. What is important is the map. So there's, there's a little magnetic sitting on the side of the glasses, sitting on the right side there, sitting on the left side or whatever is your preference. And the device needs to clip to that magnetic Mount. So the glasses that it will not work on are our skinny wire frames because the mouth is a zip cord. So it needs to have a little bit of a boat to grab onto, but you can Mount 10 different pair of glasses and change your glasses as many times as you want. As long as that now is there, the device will, will sit on the Mount.
Speaker 2 00:15:26 So the device does react to a certain amount of hand gestures. How many hand gestures are there on what do they do? Exactly.
Speaker 1 00:15:35 Okay. So the hand gestures that it recognizes, it recognizes a pointing gesture and pointing people. When you think of pointing, you think of pointing with your finger straight out, like you're pointing at something, right? Seating, gesture. I'm starting to call more of a pointer, Jack gesture. So you want your pointer finger to go straight up in the air and have the rest of your hand making a fist just like Charlene is doing. And what it's looking for is the back of your nail bed. So if you hold up, if you hold up your finger and you just point it right out at your texts for straight up and down at your texts, and you're going to hear a little beep and then you move your finger and it's going to start reading to you. And it recognizes book gesture. There's another gesture that is called the stop gesture.
Speaker 1 00:16:35 And that is you hold up your hand, you put five fingers right out in front of you. Get your hand out as if to say stop. And if you put that right in front of you, well, it will just stop. Okay. And then there's another magic little gesture in there, which is, which is a great surprise for people who like to know the time of the date. Um, I'm constantly forgetting the date, especially with COVID. So there's a watch gesture. So you do not need to be wearing a watch, but there's a gesture that looks like you make a fist and raise your hand as if you're looking at your watch. Ah, if you do it just for a couple of seconds, it's going to tell you the time, if you hold it for another second or so it's also going to tell you the date, thank you for your watch.
Speaker 2 00:17:31 Cool. So, um, so I want to cover each thing that it does, but I want to at least understand the big difference between the handheld and the, um, wearable. Is that fair to them? Those two things. Yes. Um, so the handheld has the laser, um, which the laser enables you to do what better to read better than the glasses?
Speaker 1 00:18:02 No, no, it's not, not at all better. It's just meant for people who have a little bit of vision. So you, so for low vision, you can actually see where that laser is. So what
Speaker 2 00:18:16 I see, so you can directly affect what it reads by pointing it towards that.
Speaker 1 00:18:24 Exactly. So where is the wearable? Your finger X is that laser, your finger or your head, right? Your finger or, or where you're pointing. Right. You can tap the device. He can talk to the device. And it's exactly what you said. It's all about. What are you, where is your head pointing?
Speaker 2 00:18:43 Gotcha. Okay. All right. So do the wearable. So since the wearable is more for a partial vision and the glasses could be, I presume either or yes. Is it, do they all have the same for the exception of the laser? Do they all have the same menu items on it?
Speaker 1 00:19:04 They, they do not the basic menu items. So like changing the voice, you can have an American female or a British male. Those are the same. You can speed it up or you can slow it down. Those are the same, but the handheld device does not have facial recognition right now. It doesn't have the barcodes. It doesn't have, it. Doesn't have the money. Um, down the road, those will be available, all occurred. People who want them. But right now in the handheld, in the, or Camry what's available is reading for you can, you can get it with, with the smart reading
Speaker 2 00:19:53 Elisa. Um, I want to talk about barcodes scanning. Um, tell me a little bit about this. How does it work?
Speaker 1 00:20:03 So the way that it works is as long as your device has turned on, you just hold a barcode and you just hold, hold, whatever you want. That, that barcode to be read, just hold it in front of you and just wait a second. And it will tell you what is there, if we don't know where the barcode is very slowly, it's not us around and it will sign that barcode. You just have to go still.
Speaker 2 00:20:38 Okay. Um, so if I had a cereal box, let's say that, and it had a barcode on, it would read like raisin and it might read how much, um, how much, what would it all say? Like, does it have all the stuff that dietary stuff does it, is it different for each product?
Speaker 1 00:21:01 So if, if you're only looking for the barcode, my suggestion is to use the automatic detection and just let it read that barcode. And it would say raising Brown 10 ounce box, uh, okay. Something like that. Um, if you want to hear all of the dietary, if you want to hear the ingredients, if you, if you have a box of something that you need to prepare and you want the instructions, that's where you can use the OCR to read, read anything on the box, or that's where you can use the smart reading. So you say the tap and say, tell me the instructions, right? You don't want to hear everything on the box,
Speaker 2 00:21:45 How many barcodes are there? And if you don't, if you find that there's not one by chance, that's in there. Can you add it? So, first of all, how many, how wide of a variety of barcodes do you have?
Speaker 1 00:22:01 So I don't know an exact number because every time I very often I'll find something is in there that was not in there. So I believe that whatever they're doing and update, they're also putting some barcodes in there. So we're talking in the millions. Excellent. But there are still a lot of products that are not in there. And there is, there is a way to teach it barcodes. So there's there's room in there that you can teach it up to a hundred barcodes.
Speaker 2 00:22:33 It is. So it's pretty easy. It's not,
Speaker 1 00:22:36 It's very easy. It just takes a matter of a couple of seconds. All right.
Speaker 2 00:22:43 Uh, do you have something you could show us how it reads?
Speaker 1 00:22:47 Absolutely. And I see Charlene is, is reading. Um, so yes. I want to show you how it reads. I also want to show you how the read reads and I'll, I'll tell you what I'm doing and, um, I have to get it cost to a mic. Are you able to hear that a little bit? Yeah. A little bit. I'll come really close and I'll, I'll tell you what I'm doing as I'm doing it. Um, and I'm wondering also, if you want to talk a little bit about what we've been doing during COVID, because it's, it, it was during COVID that they launched the smart reading and it was a little bit that they launched this brand new product or can read. Um, yes. So the company really, I think recognized early on that we're not going to get out of this as fast as we all want to get out of this situation and we still need to accommodate people.
Speaker 1 00:23:54 Um, you know, maybe even more because everyone is at home, so where, whereas people might have aides kids in school, we'll have people to help them. Parents might be more available, you know, now it's, I think everyone is just scrambling. I have to work. I have to take care of my kids. I still have to get all of these things done. And they said, you know what? We're not going to wait. We're going to launch these because these are, these are so valuable to people, maybe even more so during this time. And they just, they wanted to bring these to the community. Um, so, or itself actually really quickly, um, they sent all of the engineers home and had them up and running and working from home, I think within a week or less, wow. They sent the whole global sales team, um, sort of as the pandemic, you know, came down upon us, um, country by country.
Speaker 1 00:24:54 They were like, okay, now you're home now, you're home now, you're home. And they said, everyone keep doing what you're doing. You need to connect with people. You need to, you need to connect with all of your partners that you're working with in your ecosystem and just make sure everyone is supported and they know what they're doing. Um, and see how we can help them. And that's, that's really what the company just kept going strong during this time. Um, we just won an award, um, at CES, the consumer electronics show. Oh, excellent. Yeah, for the OrCAD read, um, we got the best of innovation award, which, which was incredibly exciting, um, to win another award at CES because this is a big, amazing show where everyone comes with their best of their best. Um, so that was a huge accomplishment for us. Um, and it, it was just, it was a really interesting and powerful shift to keep doing this work during COVID.
Speaker 2 00:26:04 I'm curious about, um, the, my, my readers, that kind of what you call it, my read,
Speaker 1 00:26:10 The, or can read or
Speaker 2 00:26:12 Can read, um, can it read like, through screens, like, cause I know a lot of times you have an iPad or something, you know, most kids now they don't have a textbook necessarily. They have all their stuff on their iPad. So you can obviously you can, um, do the voice a lot, but can you, if you wanted to, could you take it and have it read the screen?
Speaker 1 00:26:37 Absolutely. It reads computer screens. It really will read any printed texts on any surface. Wow. So cool. Yeah. I can cheat and have it,
Speaker 2 00:26:47 My kids work and say, no, you don't have that all done, right?
Speaker 1 00:26:52 Yes. And you won't be the only parent out there doing that. Ah, excellent. All right. You definitely could do that.
Speaker 2 00:27:01 Um, is it D R U D. Did you want to tell us, is there any more about that? Or can I, should I move to the next thing?
Speaker 1 00:27:09 Yes, let's move, move to the next thing. Um, I just wanted to, I just really wanted to yeah. Talk cause I think it's, it's significant. Um, Oh yeah, totally. Is what was, what
Speaker 2 00:27:22 It's really important. I want to talk about the recognizing money because you know, I think there's a lot of things that you can pull out and, um, have recognized money, but you're, it's just one more thing. This feels like it's kind of built into this and um, so you don't have to pull something else out. I just want to, does it read both new and old bills? Yes, it does. And how many different kinds of money does it read?
Speaker 1 00:27:52 Oh my gosh. Um, a lot. I don't even know the number now, but it will read, it will read Euro's it will read pesos. It will read Canadian dollars. It will read Israeli shekels we're global. So it, it knows a lot of currency.
Speaker 2 00:28:10 That's cool. How long does it take to recognize something? Monetary was the money
Speaker 1 00:28:15 Just a second. Um, it's, it's exactly the same thing. The same way that you can hold a barcode right in front of you and just pause and, um, you do the exact same thing with money.
Speaker 2 00:28:29 So can I tell you if it's a counterfeit bill?
Speaker 1 00:28:35 Yeah, unfortunately, no, but I haven't, I haven't been able to get my hands on a canvas that's okay.
Speaker 2 00:28:43 So, uh, I, I just thought it was funny that somebody asked me that once. Can you read or tell you if it's counterfeit? I'm like, I don't know. I've never had one. So, um, so that's, so it seems like just about any country you could go to, or a lot of countries you could go to, you could, you'd be able to read what your money was. Um, it sure gives a new meaning to being able to make sure the cab, people are honest with you. If you don't want to use a credit card, or if you have that money exchange, you know, um, making sure you get what you are supposed to be getting.
Speaker 1 00:29:25 Exactly. Exactly.
Speaker 2 00:29:28 I'd like to talk about facial recognition. Talk a little bit about how that works.
Speaker 1 00:29:35 So what the facial recognition is doing is it's not, it's not taking a picture of your face. It's actually measuring, it's taking a bunch of different measurements of your face. So facial recognition needs to see two eyes in those, in a mouth. And it's measuring from different points and it takes those measurements and it computes those measurements. And so, so for us, we, we teach facial recognition that you look at a person, you sit about three feet apart, shoulder to shoulder, nose to nose, and you hold the side of the device and it will say face learning, please hold the device for up to 30 seconds and you can hold it for a full 30 seconds. You can hold it for two seconds. Then when you're done, you let go. And it says, please name the person in front of you after the beep along beep and then you just say that person's name, it will read the person's name back to you. And if you liked the way that it sounded, you just tap the side of the device to confirm, or you can swipe to start over.
Speaker 2 00:30:57 If you have more than one friend, uh, that eventually that you meet that has the same name. Can you go change that name to like, you know, Sam J instead of, um, you know, just Sam?
Speaker 1 00:31:13 Absolutely. Yep.
Speaker 2 00:31:15 And can you do it through now? You know, you don't have the idea of just sitting down necessarily face-to-face with someone, right? So let's say how we're doing right now with zoom. Can you do it through the screen?
Speaker 1 00:31:30 Yes. And you can definitely do it through the screen. The only problem is that we have too many people, so you really only need one. You can only have one face at a time to teach at a time. So let me say, if you are doing
Speaker 2 00:31:46 One, you could have it point to the camera and have it, see that person. Yes. And do that. That's cool. Um, is that new or did it always do that?
Speaker 1 00:31:58 Um, theoretically it would always do that. It's just more accurate. So the device just keeps getting better.
Speaker 2 00:32:08 Can you do it with a picture? Yes. Like through a picture frame?
Speaker 1 00:32:13 Um, as long as there's no glare. Um, but yes you can. So it has to be a, it has to be a human and I can't, uh, I can't take picture of my dog and I knew he was going there. Yes. This Charlene, all kidding aside. This is such a big want from people. And I it's just something I, because of all the fur, they just can't get the measurements.
Speaker 2 00:32:46 How many faces can it hold
Speaker 1 00:32:48 Up to 150 call? I don't have that many friends.
Speaker 2 00:32:55 Aw, poor Shirley. And everyone's got to email her now and be her friend, um, that is major cool. So does it recognize expressions? So like if you, if it says, you know, you know, Sam J or whatever, can it, can it say smiling or anything?
Speaker 1 00:33:20 No, right now that it just can't.
Speaker 2 00:33:23 All right. I want to, that that facial recognition is really cool. And how accurate is it?
Speaker 1 00:33:32 Um, it is, it is pretty accurate. It can, it can definitely think that that someone is the same person, if they have very similar bone structure. So for instance, my sister and I don't really look alike in the sense our coloring is different. My eyes are Brown, her eyes are blue, but our bone structure is so similar. Um, that my guess is it could get us confused. Um, it won't recognize twins, ah, really deeply unless they have something subtle that we're not seeing, but like identical twins. Um, it wasn't hard, but it's, it's really pretty accurate. It's, it's really good. Facial recognition.
Speaker 2 00:34:17 Presumably if you walk into a room, you can hear the people announced to look at you. Like you can't come up from behind and know that that's John, whoever you, you would only know if he turned around and looked at you. Yes. Or if you've heard him talk about
Speaker 1 00:34:33 Right. So what I wonder though, right. If he said, hi, Sam, it's me.
Speaker 2 00:34:40 Um, what I wonder is, um, let's say you come into a room and you have three people look at you. How does it handle that?
Speaker 1 00:34:48 If it knows all three people, it will actually announce all three people. Or if it knows one person, it will say Sam, Jasmine and a woman is in front of you and a child is in front of you.
Speaker 2 00:35:02 Okay. So you'll know that there's about three people that are in there. Yes. Okay. Um, I want to stay on this and talk about, uh, what the, the objects that, you know, when I watched the videos, it can obviously tell you if there's a chair or a cup or a person, do you have to train it that? Or does it just have that in it? Does it come knowing that,
Speaker 1 00:35:34 So right now that that is in the device, but it's, it's in beta, which means that it's not there yet. It means the company put it, the company as it is, this is people who are, they, they wanted to make sure that the hardware can handle it. And that you have this, this software gift, because when they do updates, when they tweak it, it will get better. Um, right now it's, they're working on it. It's a work in progress.
Speaker 2 00:36:11 And will the idea be that you could add more things or objects if you wanted to identify habit, identify things in the future?
Speaker 1 00:36:21 I wish that I knew the answer to that. I don't know if they, if they are just teaching it a bunch of different things and, and one day we're going to just be able to look at at this or that or the other thing, and it's going to be in there because they taught it that. Or if it's something that we're going to be able to teach ourselves, I don't have the answer to that. I wish I did. I don't know if I'd be able to spill the beans, but actually
Speaker 2 00:36:57 You, we have ways of making people talk.
Speaker 1 00:37:00 Exactly. So
Speaker 2 00:37:04 I want to just whip back to the text reading, um, where it talks about, you know, you can read texts with a newspaper or out of a book I presume, or sounds like you can read it through, um, over an iPad screen. Yes. Uh, what's the limitations for text reading of it.
Speaker 1 00:37:25 There there's no limitations. This device is so smart and knows. Just knows how to read it's text. It's like, it's like a Labrador retriever who wants to fetch it's bone and it is not going to stop playing until you're like, I can't do this anymore. This stop for awhile. Um, this device is just going to keep working, especially with the text and now with the smart reading, um, it's, it's just even easier to find what you want it to read because you can be more specific. Um,
Speaker 2 00:38:06 Yeah. Um, I, it just seems like there's a never endless amount of stuff at it. Does. Um, have they been able to keep it, like, for me, I, I like, you know, I, I admire that the iPhone could do so much, but sometimes it does so much that there are things that doesn't do so well. Um, presumably you're, you know, or cam technologies is concentrating to make sure that everything that they do add that it does well, it, that it's more important. It does things extremely well, then they have 40 things on that. It does someone. Okay.
Speaker 1 00:38:45 Exactly. And that's, that's really, you know, we talked about, about the object recognition, um, being, being in beta right now. Right. So, so normally they wouldn't even put that in there until they have it. Um, but they decided to, to just let our OrCam users kind of go along on the ride with this. Um, so I, you know, I can tell you, I know that we have the best OCR on the market. I've heard people even working for other companies saying, okay, you guys have the best OCR. Um, our engineering team is well over 200 people now they're, they're, full-time employed and they are working hard to, to have this continue to be the best OCR on the market. We know that we don't have, you know, airport facial recognition technology. But what we do have is the best face recognition that you're going to be able to get in a device of this size that does what it does. Um, the money reader is accurate. The barcode is accurate. Um, I hope nobody from the company is listening to what I'm about to say the reader, but that's the next thing I was just going to touch on
Speaker 2 00:40:00 Because yeah, it recognizes colors. So talk about that.
Speaker 1 00:40:07 It's as good as the other color readers on the market. And that's, that is a function of right. It's a function of where you're standing. Um, it's, it's a color reader that we're not going to pass that one up.
Speaker 2 00:40:24 I will say I have been disappointed in most color readers I've seen, uh, not only because they don't always get the colors. Right. But they, you know, I think there could be more diversity of what colors they can tell you. Um, but
Speaker 1 00:40:44 Yeah, this one has a huge range of colors. Like things that I, one time it told me, mob, pinkish, ah, random colors in there. You're not going to walk out with, with a blue sock and a white sock. You're going to know that you have a light colored sock and a dark colored sock. You could walk out with a black sock and a Navy blue sock, depending on tested that color accuracy. Isn't the right. It's, it's as good as the other color readers. Um, what happens if you pointed at something random color that is maybe the darker color, the more prevalent color.
Speaker 2 00:41:27 Gotcha. Okay. Well,
Speaker 1 00:41:30 One thing that I like about the charging is the little magnetic. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:41:36 Oh yeah. Let's, let's talk about the charging like battery. How long does it last? You gave a little, what's the difference between battery life with the handheld, as opposed to the wearable? How does that work?
Speaker 1 00:41:50 The way that it works? So the wearable, if you're using it, non-stop continuous use up to 90 minutes and the handheld continuous use up to four hours. Um, Charlene Charlene is wearing her device right now. I can see her with her device and Charlene has her device plugged in. So if you're sitting in front of a computer or working, you can just work with your device plugged in. I am, I have the biggest charging paranoia. I start to freak out when my, when my phone goes, when my phone battery goes under 80%. Oh, I had the guy crazy with the targeting. Wow. I'm going to tell you guys what I do.
Speaker 2 00:42:40 90 minutes doesn't feel like that much time.
Speaker 1 00:42:43 So it, it, it will go to sleep. It'll fall sleep if you're not using it. Um, because
Speaker 2 00:42:52 90 minutes and four hours with the two D devices,
Speaker 1 00:42:56 The size of the device. So sitting on your glasses really needs to be small and light and comfortable. Um, it's under one ounce, so they can only put so large with a battery and battery and you can go from zero to 80% in 20 minutes. Yeah. Really fast. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:43:22 All right. So that's also bad then if you're talking about that And is it worse? Like, can you get, is it worth getting another battery you could just pop in if you're not in a position to charge and you need to use it longer term, or is that harder to do
Speaker 1 00:43:42 So you are never, ever gonna actually touch or Kim's battery it's inside of the device, which you don't have to take apart. Um, we have, we have a battery pack that we sell called a charge. Me that is a little pack that you can just drop it in there when you're not using it. And it will charge it really fast. And you just charge your charge. Me, it holds at least four charges. Um, use any external battery pack.
Speaker 2 00:44:11 Okay. Kind of like the things you can buy as per cell phones, if you're out on the go and you're not near something. Okay. How about navigation wise? What are they doing in regards to navigation? Uh, is that the same as the cupper chair? When I saw somebody say what's in front me and they said a door to your left and the door to your right. How is that in there now? So it, it was in there a little bit and they actually pulled it out of there because it is not there yet. It's just not there yet. And navigating people who cannot see is, is a huge responsibility. That's it is. So it is so knowing that it's just not there yet. Um, it, it was something, they, it was, it was part of the beta. Ah, gotcha. Yeah. I was wondering how that it is, it does get tricky, right?
Speaker 2 00:45:10 Because there's so many things that are in competing in a way with it. You got light that you might have trouble, you know, if there's lighting and many things. Exactly. So it's going to be, it needs to be safe and work work really, really well. So, so they pulled that one out and the original one, um, I know what the, the thing that I was excited about in the original one was, as you remember, probably is this the signs and the street signs and the idea of reading the shops when you're walking by. Yeah. But at that time it depended so much on this, the gesture pointing exactly to the sign. Um, is it gotten a little better? Like, can you more look at things and have it read it then? Or do you have to keep doing the point gesture because that does feel like a more, uh, partial vision thing, right.
Speaker 2 00:46:13 Unless you know exactly where something is, it, it has gotten so much better. Um, the device that you tried, Sam it's, it's really a different device. Charlene's nodding and actually Charlene has one and Charlene uses one. Um, I, I use this device every day of my life, but my vision is fine, so I can, I can, you know, say it does this and it does that, but I think we want to let Charlene speak here for a minute because she's using this in real life. So Charlene, but have you done it with street signs and things like that? Charlene,
Speaker 3 00:46:53 I gotta admit. I haven't had a lot of chance because of COVID. Um, but for it, the processor now is, uh, eons better than the original one. I mean, it just reads everything so quick. It just, and I actually learned, I looked at the screen and I put my heading, got my finger up there and unmute, it was telling me a mute button.
Speaker 2 00:47:19 Oh, that's cool. Yeah. So, but you're saying Elisa, uh, that, um, the street signs read easier.
Speaker 1 00:47:30 Um, somebody could maybe look at the street signs and does it have a wider variety of a path of seeing then? Is that the difference? Um, it, it, I don't know that it's any wider. It still sees out like a comb, 70 degrees all the way around. It just does everything better. Um, so, so for instance, I play the violin and I, Oh really? Yeah. Sam you'll relate to this. So you get, you can get your violin into and using the pegs at the end, but when you want to get it, you know, just exact, exact, exact, it's so nice to have those fine tuners. Yes. So it, it almost feels like, you know, I know that it's a lot more technical, what they did with the OrCam to make it so much better. But I always think of it in, in music terms that they put fine tuners on everything. Ah,
Speaker 3 00:48:29 It is incredibly better. I mean, it, I can't even explain it. It's just, it was good in the beginning, but this is at a whole different level. I mean, it's just, it sits on your glasses, just like this it's so small. You don't even, there's no cumbersome thing going on.
Speaker 1 00:48:50 I need to take off his head. Both versions. So yes, Charlene, I think Charlene, you were one of the very first people in Minnesota to have,
Speaker 3 00:49:02 So I think I sent you on your journey.
Speaker 1 00:49:06 Yep. You did Elisa. I'm wondering, um, is there a help menu in the OrCam so if you need to get help with something, absolutely. And you can just ask it so you can, you can ask it, you can, it has several commands. So you can ask for help. Um, you can ask for the Orkambi to enter the menu for you. You can ask, if you can't remember the vocal commands, you can even ask the vote for the vocal commands. You can ask it to tell you the battery life. You can ask it to talk faster, slower, so you can really control it. Voice control. Yep. So how can you, how does it work with the updates? So the way that it works with the updates is we ask you to connect it to your home wireless. It's a very simple process. You get a QR code, you connect it to the wireless network in your home.
Speaker 1 00:50:17 And when, when there are updates, they just send out a ping. And when you plug it in, it will grab it and it will do the update. And it'll tell you the progress or the progress. Pardon? The updates, the updates are free as part of your warranty. Now I should, I should say, not the upper grades. So if they add a whole new feature, unless they decide to surprise us, like they did sort of during this time, um, if they add a whole new, completely different feature, that would be considered an upgrade sort of a different product.
Speaker 2 00:51:00 So the updates would be considered improving upon the features that are currently in there. And the upgrades would be like, let's say they add, uh, some object recognition, uh, more, that would be an upgrade. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:51:18 That would be an upgrade. But right now the object recognition, they put it in. There really is a gift to everybody. It's not people who have the device now with this beta version of the object recognition, when they officially add object for completion as a feature it's already going to be in there better as an update Charlene's clapping.
Speaker 2 00:51:48 And is there anything else it can do via the internet besides update? Okay.
Speaker 1 00:51:55 Um, you know what, that's it? That is the only reason that you're connected to the internet. They want this device to be private for cold people, and they want this device to work on its own and not have to be connected to an internet. So if someone's working in a basement and they can't, they can't get internet, um, if someone is an illegal setting, if someone is working with sensitive information, um, or you're out nowhere, and if you're out in the middle of nowhere, if you're in a, if you're in school and you're taking a test and we can't, we can't be connected, obviously
Speaker 2 00:52:36 Save information on it.
Speaker 1 00:52:40 No, the only information that you can save are the faces that you add, the barcodes that you add,
Speaker 2 00:52:50 They don't make it, you know, communicate so you can like copy stuff to something. Okay.
Speaker 1 00:52:58 Right. That's that's, it's not in there. Got it.
Speaker 2 00:53:01 Yeah. Um, how about, is there any idea of, well, you talk about that you can connect it. Bluetooth. Does this mean with like hearing AIDS and how about external speakers? If you wanted it to be louder and sound really good.
Speaker 1 00:53:20 Yes, absolutely. So the Bluetooth that actually gets it's really, when we have it connected to the Bluetooth, it will connect directly with Starkey Livio edge hearing AIDS. Um, for other hearing AIDS, you need an external te coil box, but you can connect it through, through the T-cell box. And you've definitely any wireless, um, any wireless speaker you can connect it to.
Speaker 2 00:53:53 So how can we, we can't talk about monetary stuff. Like we can't talk about how much it costs, but how can someone find out more about it?
Speaker 1 00:54:06 So you can always call me, I know we're on a local radio station.
Speaker 2 00:54:11 No, we are. We are actually global. Okay. We're global. We are global. We are online as well. So we are totally global.
Speaker 1 00:54:20 Beautiful. So you can still call me, I'm going to, I'm going to give you my number and I'm gonna give you my email. My phone number is (612) 940-9037. Do that again, please? (612) 940-9037. I'm going to give you my email, Alyssa, a L I Z, a dot Olynyk O L E N I C
[email protected].
Speaker 2 00:55:06 Excellent. And is there any thought, cause this is, uh, even though it is a little bit of a pretty penny, even though it's, it does a lot of great things. Are there any thoughts of, you know, are you seeing anything as far as with officers covering this and also, are there any payment plans that people who have to privately pay out of pocket and want it can get on?
Speaker 1 00:55:32 Yes. All of the above. So, um, for veterans, we have thousands of users of Oregon users who are veterans, the VA, as long as you qualify, they are incredibly generous. And we have a huge population of veterans who are blind and who have low vision who are using OrCam. And it has, it has been provided to them at a hundred percent, a hundred percent of the costs by the VA. Many, many States are covering this device. They want people to, they see the value, they see that this is helping people get back to work. This is helping people stay in work. And we have many States who are providing this at no cost, um, to
Speaker 2 00:56:17 So very, very quickly though, I'm curious to know how you're doing your demonstrations. Are you actually doing them
Speaker 1 00:56:24 This way when you have to demonstrate? Cause you probably not. You know, you know what I mean? So what, so the way that we're doing them is we have many, many, um, partners or distributors throughout the U S so most States have have an OrCam dealer. Most States have low vision organizations who, who have, or camps to demonstrate. And most States have state councilors who have the device and can demonstrate. And they actually, people have been able to see people in person, um, and, and demonstrate the device. And yes, um, as, as odd as it seems, we are doing online demonstration. Gotcha. Um, the video demonstrations, um, which is the great irony of, of what we're doing. We just, we shifted a lot to online, but we do have some people who are, are able to go out and see people in person carefully. I really, really appreciate you coming on Elisa. I it's, it's been long time, but it's good to, to know that you're doing well. And, uh, these exciting updates with Orkambi are exciting. So I good luck with, um, doing this and I hope to be able to get my hands on and actually play with one soon. It's again, I, I would love to see the, how far it's come. Um, but thank you very much and I appreciate you being on. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It was great to do this again, and it's also great to talk to you and Charlene
Speaker 2 00:58:18 You've been listening to disability and progress. The views expressed on the show are not necessarily those of KPI or its board of directors. This, this KPI 90.3 FM, Minneapolis and KPI that org. My name is Sam and the host of this show, Mason, of course, is our trustee engineer, Charlene dolls, my research team. We were speaking with Elissa, all Nick and in regards to or cam. And she is the area sales manager for the lakes region of the Midwest for Orkambe technologies. If you want to be on my email list, you can email me at disability. Add progress at Sam, jasmine.com. Feel free to join us and see our podcast list. Ask your smart speaker to play the podcast or download art crusty smart app on your smartphone. Thanks so much for joining us. Goodbye.
