I got to use this technology when the LightHouse here in San Francisco hosted a small accessible tech conference. They were ledding people come up to try it out, wearing a set of glasses with the primary camera connected to one of the templates with a wire heading down to a bulky computer control system. I really did not like the system, the technology is novel and functions, but there are much more faster, efficient, and cheaper ways to accomplish everything the Orcam offers just by using an iPhone.

I was given a laminated piece of paper that had information about the technology, held it in front of my face and pressed a switch on the computer control device. The camera took a picture and shortly there after began reading the text on the paper to me. While you can pause the voice that is reading the text to you, there is absolutely no way to go back and granularly work your way through characters or words, paragraphs or lines like you can with KMFB reader. It has very basic facial recognition, but The camera and voiceover description functionality on the iPhone or through something like Facebook works exactly the same and is faster.

It has object recognition functionality, and I was given a small spice jar to put in front of my face for it to recognize, but again, it's nothing that the iPhone can't do when using an app like DigitEyes or be my eyes. I was having a really hard time finding justifications for the bulky technology and the price during the demonstration, so personally this just isn't anything useful to me nor is it anything I would want the department of rehabilitation to waste money on for me.

Hi--I myself haven't tried OrCam, but I have friends who have and they say that they're really helpful, advanced, and easy to use. I guess essentially they're smart glasses for the blind that allow you to read, recognize text, or recognize faces via the point of a finger. I think it's a really cool concept, but I myself haven't had much experience with them. I'm looking into it in the near future, because although they are a bit pricey, to me it would be entirely worth it to re-gain my independence in regards to reading. I know there are several products out there, but I heard from friends that this is one of the best. Thanks everyone for your thoughts and opinions! I will respond to each of you once I have a bit more time :)

You're basically paying thousands of dollars to skip the step of learning a smartphone. The AT industry is loaded with incredibly overpriced tech, and this is no exception. I know hundreds of blind people and haven't met a single one who thinks this is a good idea. Face recognition has gone mainstream, so if there's not already an app to do this, there probably will be soon. I've been doing everything else on my smartphone for years. My phone recognizes barcodes, text and objects, and I can easily call up a random person across the world if I need realtime help. I can't really understand why someone would want this.

Hello.

I tried OrCam when I went to sight village in London.

Honestly it's not worth the price.

I got to walk outside with it. When I asked how a blind person is ment to know where signs are and all that, the answer was, wel i'm not actually completely sure I got an answer if i'm being honest. I do know they showed me that I can point at signs and have OrCam read them to me but there's a couple of problems with the system: 1. There is no way, what so ever to read word by word letter by letter and paragraph by paragraph.

2. There is no way to save the information. When I pointed that out to the demo guy, he told me that I was "very smart with tech," (in other words, "Oh crap, this guy knows what he's talking about...") Then tried to tell me that it would help those blind people who are older and not as good at using tech as I am. I'm sorry but no, no it won't.

3. When reading websites outloud the machine forgets that there's a dot in w w w dot. For example; w w w dot google dot com would be read as, w w w, google, com. As you can tell this is not very useful at all. What was The persons answer to that? Well you know there's a dot there don't you? I do, but without any way to save onto the machine I would have to rely on my memory which is quite bad at the best of times.

I honestly do not see this as a useful piece of equipment what so ever. The IPhone can do this, and all the aps I have on my phone apart from KNFB reader are free.

I will admit that Orcams system is faster than KNFB reader or Tap tap see, but that in no way means i'd spend that amount of money on it.

I'd like to know how the people who came up with OrCam thought the blind person would 1. know where the signs are on their streat or where ever it is they are walking and 2. point at them in such a way that they would get great reading and not the wall or something like that instead. This system in my oppinion should be taken off the market as there are free apps for IPhone and Android.

I would not want a college to spend their money on this and if they offered it to me I'd not take it.

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I just saw a demonstration of the technology and I'd have to say, while it does work as advertised, it's not worth the $2,500 (for the text only version) or the $3,500 (for the version that can identify faces, objects, money). There are so many other alternatives that can perform those tasks for a fraction of the costs. The only true benefit is for people who like to read in bed. That was something that was impossible for most OCR technologies until the Orcam came to the market. It's innovative, but it's just not quite there yet. Also, it's priced well beyond its value to consumers.

Saw a demo, wasn't very impressed. When I asked how someone who is a low partial or completely blind could use the glasses in real life, the explanation I got was basically that they send you a trainer and you learn where to point.

The actual glasses and battery unit were bulky and unremarkable. The recognition seemed fine.

I have knfb reader on my iphone. It has fine navigation options, speech, braille, and large print access, the ability to save files, and works great. Object recognition tasks (keep in mind orcam only works with up to 100 faces, and 150 items!) can also be done with my phone. Why would I pay $3500 for this system?

You can say that it's more convenient with glasses. But I mean, how often am I going to be in a situation where someone I know well enough to have saved their face in my glasses isn't going to verbally greet me, and I'd decide to pull out my glasses and battery pack for a solution?

If I had $3500 to spend on any solution like this, maybe I'd get Aira. That seems more generally useful for a bigger variety of tasks (although month-to-month instead of one time purchase) and isn't just things I can do with my cell phone.

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