The Blind Buzz: First Impressions of the Cobolt Kapten GPS

h2>First Impressions of the Cobolt Kapten GPS

On the face of it, the Kapten GPS looks ike very good value at some £159 – it is a small (matchbox-size) device that includes not only the GPS, but also an FM radio, an MP3 player and various phone connection functions. It can also act as a voice recorder. It responds to voice commands once you know how, and is narrated by voice as you operate it, so is potentially extremely useful for blind people as a navigation aid amongst other things.

This is not a fair review of the unit overall, because I haven’t yet had it long enough to evaluate all its possibilities. In particular, I haven’t yet given the GPS a thorough workout. What I’m doing here is giving you a first impression, which might well put you off or make the device a must-have. It’s going to depend what features you really value.

What’s in the box?

• The Kapten unit itself.
• A USB cable, which enables you to exchange files with another device and allow the Kapten to charge up, something that seems painfully slow. It takes about 4 hours when you first unbox it.
• A cable with ear-buds at the end, and a microphone switch part-way along.
• CDs containing KapManager software and an audio version of the manual.
• A paper manual in large print.
• A rather pointless “Getting Started” guide, and another small leaflet in small print whose contents I forget. They’re harder to read than the manual, and may confuse matters when you start off.

Setting Up

The first thing to do is charge the battery by plugging the USB cable into the Kapten and plugging the other end of the cable into a computer USB port. The battery level is inicated by a row of lights at the top end of the unit, above the circular bit with the K button in the middle. As I didn’t know how many lights to expect, I didn’t know when the job was done. There doesn’t seem to be any sound input or output while this is going on.

When you’re charged up, you can plug in the headphones and get started. Correction – yu can try to get started. Without any audio feedback, the Kapten continues to do something or other that is indicated by the lights again looking like progress bars across the top of the unit. I presume it’s looking for GPS data, but it’s anyone’s guess. This device is being marketed to blind people, some of whom won’t be able to see any lights.

Old reviews mention an external speaker, which is maybe an extra accessory – I don’t have one of those, and I must say it would be a lot easier than wrestling with the headphones.

The headphones are actually a couple of ear-buds, which I hate with a venom. They are perfectly circular, and try as I might, I haven’t got any place in my ear where they will stay put. As this is a GP:S designed for people walking, or even cycling, you can imagine the distraction of having these darn things constantly falling off you when you need information about where you’re going.

It’s bad enough when you’re trying to listen to the manual, listen to the Kapten’s voice feedback and at times a screen reader as well. It’s taken quite a lot of persistence to get through this process.

A word to the wise in any case wehn navigating outdoors – if you have your ears stuffed with headphones, you need to keep the volume down to be safe. On the other hand you might not hear Kapten very well in noisy traffic. It’s a hard one to get right.

OK, I’ll assume we’re ready to go, charged up and have somehow stuck the ear-buds into our ears.

If the Kapten isn’t on, you start it, quite obviously with the Stop button. Silly of me, I was looking for an on-switch. Towards the top of the unit there is a circular area with switches around the edge at points north, east, south and west. The Stop button is the southern one.

The unit says, in a less than cheery tone, “Rise and shine”. Sounds more like an order than a greeting. The voice, called for some obscure reason, Sirina, sounds uncannily like the woman who reads the Macular Disease Society Newsletter.

I’ll start with a relatively simple feture – the radio.

Radio

By the way, the voice keyword to summon up the radio is FM. The Kapten doesn’t appear to know the word radio.

There is a row of buttons below the circular area described above. The right hand button activates the FM radio.

If you press this button twice, you’re invited by the inbuilt voice to dictate the name of a radio station. It will then start reeling off a list of stations

.

If you know what station you want, you can interrupt the flow by pressing the microphone button about a third of the way along the headphone cable. Wait for a beep and then say the name of the station.

In my case, the list of available stations includes Kerrang (which I can’t actually receive), though to be fair if I request it, the unit does say it’s tuned to Kerrang, but reception may be poor.

When I tried dictating “BBC Radio Derby”, I get BBC Radio 3. If I try “BBC Radio Durby” I get BBC Radio 2. What? This station can be received here, though it isn’t strictly local. However it is listed in the Kapten’s list of stations.

When I was trying this, suddenly Kapten told me there were no GPS data, which would be needed to find the stations. Strange, it had just been interrupting everything several times to tell me “GPS is up”.

Where am i?

This is one of many keywords and phrases that you can speak into the microphone and get straight to a function.

I pressed the button on the headphone cord – what this button is called depends on which bit of the documentation you are reading. I don’t know, I’m just the custoemr. I’ll call it the microphone button for the time being.

Anyway, I pressed the button and said “Where am i?” several times, getting a slightly different answer each time.

Kapten got the city right every time, and the street. It told me I was variously at no. 3, no. 7 and no. 13. Actually I was at number 8 on the opposite side of the street to all those. Well, 2 out of 3 isn’t bad. No. 3 is about 50 yards away, which is a bit worrying for someone who is lost. And I deny hotly that I’ve ever consorted with the folks at No. 13!

Calibrate the Compass

I thought maybe this would solve some problems. As it is, I completely and repeatedly failed to get it right. The first stage is easy enough – you just leave the Kapten on the desk and let it sort out the first stage. After that you somehow have to move it in different planes, and if you don’t get it right, whatever right is, it doesn’t work. Fail at one bit, and that ends the process. Goodness knows what it takes to get this right.

If I spoke the word "compass" alone, the Kapten told me that a magnetic source was disturbing the compass. It continued to give me this response wherever I was in my house or outside. The compass seems to be a rather difficult feature.

Points of Interest

Apparently there are no points of interest anywhere near where I live. Thanks for the compliment, guys. So how do you find your way through this desert?

I thought of walking to Tesco’s, but then Kapten asked me for a street name and house number. I’ve no idea what the answers were supposed to be. Tesco’s is in its own shopping centre,and it isn’t a street. It can’t be a point of interest, as there aren’t any. So I’m a little puzzled.

That’s as far as I’ve got with the GPS at this point.

mp3 player

If you have the Kapten plugged into a USB port, you can copy a cross some mp3 files. There is already an audio version of the Kapten manual on there. Use a bit of restraint in copying mp3s, though, because if you use up space on them, you won’t get so much voice recorder time. So it’s best to prioritise.

To select music, you press the leftmost button on the bottom row of buttons. The inbuilt voice asks what selection mode yo you want to use – album, artist and so on.

Well, with most of my music I don’t know what album it comes from, so have done all my selections by artist. Some have succeeded, and some spectacularly not, and it beats me why some slections go fine, and others give me wacky results.

Here are some misfires I had. By the way, I have mp3s by all the artists I asked for copied to the Kapten.

I said George Harrison – I got Joe Jackson.
I said Alannah Myles – I got Tomorrow singing My White Bicycle.
I said Roy Harper – I got Our House by Madness.
I said Oblique – I got Bob Seger singing Main Street.
I said Chicago – I got Jethro Tull.
I said Chicago again and got Sade.
I said Steve Winwood – I got Stevie Wonder. I tried again and got the same.
I said Al Stewart and got Marvin Gaye with “Heard it Through the Grapevine”.
I tried Al Stewart again and got Mike Oldfield’s “Moonlight Shadow”.
I said 10cc and got terje Sonset
I said Oregon – oh, no, it was Tomorrow again with “My White Bicycle”.
I tried pronouncing Oregon Or egon – I got The Who with “Won’t Get Fooled Again”.

Some that it did get right include Barclay James Harvest, Jan Garbarek (I pronounced Jan as Yan), Queen, The Beatles, Beatles without the “The” – got it, same track either way. Traffic, Spencer Davis, Lemon Pipers, Pet shop boys, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Buffalo Springfield, Imagination.All those worked fine. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to all this, unless I’ve got a Martian accent.

Voice Recorder

You might expect the Voice Recorder to have a button of its own on the body of the Kapten. No, you actually start it by voice command. Press the microphone button and say Voice Recorder.

Kapten asks “Do you want to record a voice memo?” If you say yes, you can go ahead and make your voice memo. If you say no, you go on to “Do you want to hear a voice memo?”. If you say yes, you then get a list of existing voice memos, if any. If you say no, you are asked, “Do you want to delete a voice memo?”. Say yes, and you will be presented with a list of voice memos if you have any.

That’s about it for the voice recorder. The mike supplied with the Capten will pick up other voices in the room, too, though I have no idea what it would be like to try to record in a meeting or conference. Still, a dedicated voice recorder would easily cost what the Kapten does, and it’s a nice bonus to have the recorder.

Documentation

The manual is fairly clear, though I wish it could be written more for a complete beginner rather than someone who already knows the unit.

The sort of thing I mean is that a button may be mentioned and the new user might not have remembered yet where they all are. Why not build in the odd aide-memoir such as “Circle – south – Stop button” or “Bottom row, right, radio button”, to help those of us who might have weakened for a second and not caught every point. The CD version is clearly read, and once you’re acquainted with the unit, it will pay to read or listen again.

How tactile is it?

The buttons are not that prominent. However, I have had no trouble finding them, and once you know the layout, it is easy enough to navigate. However, I can imagine people with neuropathy or heavily-used fingers finding it a bit tricky to find everything.

I’ve found I can have the Kapten in my shirt pocket and use the buttons OK so long as the button side of the unit is facing forward.

If you lay the unit in front of you with the circle bit furthest away and the mp3 GPS and radiobuttons nearest to you, you may like to know tha tthe USB port is at the far end, more or less in the middle, and I find I can feel that OK.

The headphone jack socket is on the left nearest end to you if the unit is still facing the same way. It’s a mini-jack so by definition, small, but you should be able to find that OK too. Right hand side, furthest corner, there is the volume control.

Kap Manager software

The software does not appear to be very accessible, at least with the NVDA screen reader. This barrier really did take me by surprise. If I can revise my opinion later, I’ll include it in the next article. This product is being marketed to blind people, and on this point I feel I have a right to expect better.

This means that I can’t assess the software myself. Of course, I do not have armies of sighted people ready to assist me – maybe someone assumed that a sighted person would somehow be there to assist users. Well, of course, life is not like that.

Where to get one

In the UK, the Kapten is available from Cobolt.

Please visit

https://secure.vvhosting.co.uk/cobolt/store/eric_viewItem.asp?idProduct=335

Preliminary Conclusions

I’m not yet convinced that I’m going to be able to navigate my travels using the Kapten. It acts more like a prototype device rather than something that’s been brought to market.

I can use the radio, mp3 player and voice recorder usefully, and that may be worth the asking price for the unit. But I have an idea that I may be looking at a more expensive device to make navigating by GPS a reality.

I know this is fairly harsh, but as a user’s personal safety may be at stake if they get lost, I feel quite justified in sounding off about my initial reservations.

I will be returning to the Kapten in another post, by which time I’ll hope to put the GPS side of it through its paces a great deal more. It is possible that I have not come to entirely fair conclusions here, but hopefully soon I will have a lot more experience of the Kapten to offer.

The Blind Buzz on Photography

BSoA Members Photography show runs until July 20 – Bermuda landscape winner is a colourblind photographer.

Creative Work: Blind Photographers – Feminists With Disabilities -S. E. Smith appreciates the Blind Photographers site, not only for the images but also for the way members write about their work.

Ghana: Visually Impaired Benefits From Photography Training – allAfrica.com – visually impaired woman was one of the students on a recent course provided by Foundation for Female Photojournalists (FFP). The FFP is an art and media organization that seeks to empower the vulnerable in society.

Images Without Sight – this blog follows totally blind photographer Susan Gjolmesli as she participates in a photographic project organised by Tess McMillan.

Images Without Sight Atom Feed

Images Without Sight RSS Feed

montgomery sideways – a blind stay-at-home Dad who has a lot to say about the state of the roads in his area and takes a still and a video camera with him at all times to record his findings.

Montgomery Sideways RSS Feed

My story – nickbirchak’s Photos- powered by SmugMug – Nick is legally blind, and a course in black and white photography at college set him off on the royal road to photography.

Quiet Light Photography – Drew Bedo is an artist who works in large photographic formats. He is legally blind, having severely degraded vision in one eye only. Also visit
Legal blindness doesn’t stop photographer | Ultimate Fort Bend

Seeing Blind – Cyndy Otty has achromatopsia. She tries to explain how she sees, and illustrates this with her own photographs.

see(more) photography blog – several posts about guide dogs and how the author, Laura Landry, sees her world through the lens. One of her photos has been chosen to be part of the American Printing House exhibition later this year.
Blog RSS Feed

Follow Laura Landry on Twitter

Laura Landry’s Flash web site

Laura Landry’s HTML web site.

The Blind Buzz: British Cycling events, summer/autumn, 2010

Just received this from Paul West at British Cycling. Please contact them for more information.

---

Hi Guys

The below updates may be of interest to you-

17^th July – Only the Handcycling event will go ahead at Upavon as insufficient entries were received for the other rider classifications.

25th July – Paracycling event cancelled as insufficient entries received

29^th August – Lichfield Circuit Races (Round 5 of National Series). I am currently chasing entry details for this event and hope to come back to you shortly on this.

4^th/5^thSeptember – Eurotunnel International Paracycling Weekend, Fowlmead, East Kent. This event includes the British Cycling Time Trial Championships on the Sunday.

11^th/12^th September – Rider Classification. Places are filling up quickly for the rider classification programme to be run at Manchester that weekend. It is most important and helpful to the running of events for paracycling in this country and helpful to riders both competing both at home and abroad that they are appropriately classified.  Further details from me.

19^th/23^rd September – BC National Paracycling Track Championships, Manchester. ENTRIES CLOSE 10^TH AUGUST. Entry forms and the championship matrix of events can be found in the entry form page of the track section of the BC Website

25^th September – Hillingdon Circuit Races (Final Round of the National Series). Entry forms etc to follow in due course.

I hope that you find the above helpful, but any queries please do
come back to me.

Kindest regards

Paul West

Event
Development Officer

Cycle Speedway, Para-Cycling & Track

British Cycling, Stuart Street, MANCHESTER, M11 4DQ

Tel – 0161 274 2021, 07507 641267

Fax: 0161 274 2001

www.britishcycling.org.uk

The Blind Buzz: Thunder free screenreader Version 2

I’m delighted to report that the Thunder Screen Reader is now available in version 2. This is free software, made available to visuallly impaired people world-wide. And, by Jingo, it’s British!

To read more about it, and to download the software, please visit

http://www.screenreader.net/

What’s new in this version?

• Compatible with Windows 7, 32 and 64 bit
• Works with Internet Explorer (actually, it always has, despite messages to the contrary that have popped up from time to time). Thunder still also works well with the WebbIE browser from
  http://www.webbie.org.uk/. By the way, WebbIE is a text-only browser that comes with a whole raft of other free software, such as a podcatcher (excellent!), an RSS reader and an Internet Radio receiver.
• There is also a memory-stick version of Thunder, which does not install anything on the host computer, so can be used in libraries, internet cafes or your friend’s PC without causing any disruption.

You can hear Roger and Margaret Wilson-Hines talking about their work on Thunder here…..

http://www.seethedifference.org/charities/communication-for-blind-people/screen-reading-software-for-the-blind

The Blind Buzz on Photography

After The Rain « Losing Vision Gaining Insight – the photo might be disappointing at first, but let’s look at the details.

Albany ARC holds summer transition program – WALB.com News – visually impaired students with ambitions. One aims to run her own photographic business. Trust me, somehwhere on this messy page, there is a video (Flash) and a text article.

Arts Victoria Funding – Blinkie Photography – tight arts funding jeopardises Andrew Follows’ exhibition.

Aurora: Local photographer sees through a different lens – Jim Braun Marfan’s Syndrome, which affects his eyes and many other things. Photography, however, gives him several benefits.

Authors@Google: Tony Deifell | Business Strategies 101 – Tony Deifell taught blind children photography, and learned what it means to see.

Blind Photographers on Facebook

Bllind Photography @ Losing Vision Gaining Insight – a feature on blindphotographers.org.

Capturing moments – a photography workshop in the Philippines included blind participants.

Field Test: Apple iPhone 4 Camera « The Phoblographer – some very strong features, but the iPhone 4 would not be everybody’s choice of primary camera.

Flickr: Help: Getty Images – your chance to have your images valued commercially.

Grants for Nonprofit Photography | eHow.com – USA sources of finance.

High Desert Sketches: Even Dust Devils Wear Prada In The Last Frontier – by George Covington, who is a photographer with about 10% normal vision. This is George in the day job, writing on this occasion about fashions.

In Blind Test iPhone 4 Camera Quality Bests All | AppCart – the 5 megapixel camera does well against several other phones and point-and-shoot cameras.

My world in Photography: By legally blind photographer Andrew Follows – My Nikon Life

New Book on Photography for the Web – SitePoint’s “Photography for the Web” looks really like a useful basic guide to the nuts and bolts of photography.

New photo of Eamon and myself – Blinkie Photography – Andrew Follows considers tha dvantages of manual camera settings.

New SeeAbility initiative encourages creativity (From Basingstoke Gazette) – project that encourages blind people to be creative inclues photography and other arts.
SeeAbility Web Site

One Day On Earth – The World’s Story is Yours to Tell – take part in a world-wide documentary project on 10/10/10

Photographers "Banned for Life" for Taking Photos in Public Parking Lot » Photography Bay – another confrontation between photographers and officers of the law, this time in Miami Florida. This is a situation, this article says, that is unfair to both parties. For an alternative view of photography in public places, visit
Here’s looking at you. ‘Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera’ at Tate Modern until 3 Oct – "There’s a moral blind spot at the heart of photography, writes Kerry William Purcell. It is a blind spot that was manifest in the recent outpouring of protestations and demonstrations concerning the possible criminalisation of street photography in London… "

Some IPhone 4 Cameras Have Yellowing Problem – the iPhone 3 doesn’t have this. Maybe a white balance issue?

Top 10 iPhone photo apps | ZDNet – well, there are plenty of lists like this of iPhone apps, but this one was compiled on evidence of what apps photographers used when entering a competition.

Watch: Visually Impaired Photography Students at Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind | jacksonville.com – down-to-earth account of the way students were introduced to photography.