Category: accessible Devices
Does anyone have the intell reader from Human ware? How do you like it? Does anyone have any of eye pal readers? I am thinking of getting one them. Any suggestions would be appreciative.
I have not played with the Intel Reader,but I do not recommend an Eye Pal.
Not trying to hate, just relating my experience.
I purchased the unit that connected to my computer and for a while it worked fantastically (this was on a Windows Vista machine), I would take it to a book store and feeling like a sighted person, reading a book page by page via TTS, it could even readin Russian, which I found amazing since no accessible scanning software that I knew of could do that. Then all of a sudden, the software crashed, as did my Vista machine. I tried on Windows 7 but the eyepalwas not recognized by my PC. The software it used was very unstable and frequently crashed, but while it worked it did wonders.
Note that I tested it about 2009 or 2008, so everything may have changed.
Just my experience
I talk to someone and they told me to inquire about the eye pal rol. If anyone know about this I would appreciate it.
I have the Intel reader and it is fine for what I use it for. I only use it to check the post (mail) in the morning. It's not the fastest device, but it is small enough to have a go at snapping a picture of something and seeing what comes out. They're actually not as expensive as they once were either, I got mine for £500 including the capture station (an additional accessory for scanning books and larger amounts of text). Basically, for the price, give one a try. It's not something that you may use every day, but it's good for what it is.
do you have a smart phone? do you have an iphone? if you do, you can get one of those portable scanbox from either scanstand or scanbox for around $30, get an app like text grabber or prismo for around $10, and they scan and convert to ocr within seconds. It cost you less than $50, for what you may get for $500 or $1000 if it is a stand alone unit. Its much faster than any of the specific standard loan scanner in place. If you however, need a portable scanner, have you look at Pearl from Freedom Scientific? Although i'm not a big fan of freedom scientific in any shape or size, i think Pearl is one of their better and useful product. However, with Pearl, you do need to use it with OpenBook, or other OCR...
Wow, I've not heard of those scanners that work with Iphones but I'm definitely interested in checking one out. How's the accuracy of the recognision? Thanks for the idea.
the accuracy of the recognision is very much depends on the light and the quality of the document. I've done some test with different type of documents using standscan and scanbox, with Prismo and Text grabber. For reading plain document, Text Grabber can scan and recognise the doucment within 3 to 5 seconds. Prismo took little longer to do it. text grabber got about 98% of accuracy, while prismo have about 90%.
However, when scanning a flier with images and complex colums and roles format on it, prismo takes about 10 to 15 seconds to recognise with about 75% accuracy while text grabber have about 40% of accuracy. the flier itself is very complecated, with lots of images and colums. So, it depends on what i use, i use text grabber if i want to scan a standard letter, but if i looking at reading a phone bill, for example, i'll use prismo.
O my! I bought an app called Text-Detective. But I will never recommend that to anyone.
It's mostly not recognizing anything. I can say just below 5 per cent. Even if it does, only a part of that paper. one or two lines. that's it.
I dono whether anyone is having the same issue with that app.
Raaj.
To get the best results from StandScan make sure you buy the power source for it and plug it in when you use it, you get good light by some LEDs in there and they will increase your recognition.
Raaj, how do you use your text detecter. what i mean is how you scan the document? Some skills may require to use the camera, to get the best result, e.g. not too close to the document, not too far, and of course, lighting is one of the key as well.
This is where scanbox or standscan will help. They make it in a way that you can pretty much put your document inside the box, and put your phone on top of the box where there's a hole for the camera, and it will scan the whole page without much problem.
What i suspect is that you have your phone too close to the document, try putting it about a forearm away, you might get a much better result.
Actually, text detective is not a good app at all. I've used all 3 and Text Grabber in my opinion is the best. Prizmo for me doesn't find much.