Hello Tony,It would not be possible to take note of your surroundings unless you previously install the waypoints yourself.
Bert----- Original Message ----- From: "tonysweeney" <tonysweeney1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <vicsireland@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 11:22 PM Subject: [vicsireland] Further info please on Loadstone
Hi There, I was just wondering if either of the three loadstoners might consider answering a few questions posed by this list on the product?The report by Ronan was excellent, but wouldn't it be good to have a littlefollow-up?I wonder how you would listen taking note of your immediate surroundings; Isuppose that you wouldn't use a full headset but possibly an earpiece. Looking forward to further info. All the best, Tony Sweeney.----- Original Message ----- From: "Sandberg, Robert" <robert.sandberg@xxxxxxx>To: <vicsireland@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 10:15 AM Subject: [vicsireland] Re: Well positioned in Dublin and Cork with GPS Hi folks! Yes, I will add my congratulations to the previous ones. It's a very thorough report and you've obviously put a lot of pioneer work into boosting it in Ireland. Just a couple of thoughts on the receiver and downloading Loadstone. I'm using the Globosat receiver, which is slightly larger than the Holux, maybe the size of a fat matchbox, but it doesn't give me any problems with reception or linking to the phone. In fact, I didn't even have to set up a Bluetooth pairing, which I did with my headset. Loadstone recognized it right away. It comes with a Velcro cover which I usually attach to a strap of my back pack. I'd say the easiest way of putting Loadstone on your phone is to download it strait on to it from the website. However I'm not sure which Talks version is required to access the web with your phone. I managed it with Talks Premium. And here's a question for the 3 Loadstoneers. According to the report only one of you used a headset. How did that work for you and how did the other two go about it. Personally I've a bit of a problem with using the headset. Of course it's the only alternative to constantly holding the phone up to your ear, but I find that my hearing is slightly impaired when I wear it. Although it doesn't even fill out the ear like a walkman earphone does, it affects my directional hearing. Say I have someone walking in front of me, I can't tell where exactly they are in order to overtake them. Also I walk very slowly because it's harder to tell upcoming obstacles. That's really put me off using it a lot. It would be interesting to know if any of the 3 testers are GDO's and if cane users and GDO's make different experiences. I would assume that a GDO might have less of a problem with using a headset. Cheers, Robbie -----Original Message----- From: vicsireland-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:vicsireland-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Joan Ann Brosnan Sent: Sonntag, 21. Januar 2007 22:46 To: vics Subject: [vicsireland] Re: Well positioned in Dublin and Cork with GPS Hi Ronan This is a very interesting report on Loadstone and it seems to be of huge benefit to blind people especially since Loadstone users can gather points of interest and share them with other users. I have been using loadstone and a Holux GPs receiver since last week and so, I'm still familiarizing myself with the program but, so far, I have been very impressed with its capabilities. If you know of any settings within loadstone that I should change for use in Ireland or have any useful tips, they would be great. Joan Ann. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ronan McGuirk" < ronan.mcguirk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: < vicsireland@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2007 4:43 PM Subject: [vicsireland] Well positioned in Dublin and Cork with GPSHello to the VICS list. I am enclosing our report on the use ofLoadstonebelow. We look forward to the comments of VICS members. Ronan Report Begins: Well positioned in Dublin and Cork - GPS and a mobile phone as a mobility aid for people with a vision impairment - authors: Aedan O'Meara, Cearbhall O'Meadhra, Ronan McGuirk Date January 2007 Overview Over the past few months we have been experimenting with mobile phones interacting with the Global Positioning System to assess theusefulness ofthis technology as a mobility aid to people with a vision impairment. We have been carrying out a trial of the Loadstone-GPS system at two locations in Ireland, (Dublin and Cork). In this short paper wesummariseour experiences and are pleased to report that the experiment was successful. What is the Global Positioning System? The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite navigation system.Aset of satellites is in orbit around the Earth. These satellites transmit radio signals and a person with a GPS receiver can determine his/herlocationbased on these satellite signals. There is a very good articleexplainingthe Global Positioning System in Wikipedia athttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_SystemWhat is Loadstone? Loadstone-GPS is a free program designed for Series 60 Symbian mobile phones. This software has been designed to work well with screenreaderssuch as Talks or Mobile Speak on the mobile phones. In order for Loadstone-GPS to work, it requires a separate GPS receiver that is connected to the mobile phone using Bluetooth. It is worth noting that the hardware is standard off-the-shelfequipment.It is not specially designed for visually impaired people.Furthermore,the Loadstone-GPS program itself is free. For more information on Loadstone-GPS check out the Loadstone websiteatwww.loadstone-gps.comWhat equipment did we use? Ronan used a Nokia 6600 with Talks 2.5 premium edition together with a Holux Slim 236 GPS receiver. Aedan used a Nokia 6680 with Talks 3.0 premium edition with dictionaryanda Holux slim 236 GPS receiver. Cearbhall used a Nokia 6680 with Talks 3.0 premium edition with dictionary, ThinkOutside Bluetooth keyboard, Motorola Bluetooth earphone And aHoluxslim 236 GPS receiver. How we used Loadstone The Global Positioning system works by receiving radio signals from Satellites and calculating the location of the receiver as a point of Latitude and longitude on the Earth. When you install Loadstone on your mobile phone and get it workingwithyour GPS receiver, it can tell you your latitude and longitude, altitudeandspeed and direction of movement. However, to make full use of it, itisNecessary to have a way of converting latitude and longitude to place names or as they are called "points of interest, or P.O.I.s". Loadstone, which is being written by a blind programmer, is specially designed to make the recording of any point of interest to youabsolutelysimple. Pressing the hash key in the Loadstone program on your mobile phone puts you into an edit box and it is similar to entering a textmessage.After using Loadstone for a few months we collected hundreds of point names. The types of point names we collected included train stations, Luas stations, shops, pubs and many road junctions. Ronan found that he could use loadstone to tell which train stationtheDublin Dart had stopped at. Using Loadstone on the Dart train gives a great deal of information. Not only can you tell which station you are at,butalso when the train is moving you can tell the speed and direction.Youcan follow the curve of Dublin Bay as the train leaves Dun Laoghaireheadingdue west and gradually curves through the compass till it is headingnorth.Ronan found that he needed to learn the meaning of compass points suchasWest By North, and East by North East. Using Loadstone gives a veryrichunderstanding of your location, speed, direction and altitudeespeciallyif you are travelling in a bus or a car. Cearbhall collected points along the seafront in Bray. This is a half kilometre of straight esplanade with no distinguishing features. Hewasable to use Loadstone to mark the point of entry to the esplanade (aparticularset of steps and buildings alongside the walk that identifieddifferentparts of the route. When you have collected a set of points yourself or downloaded themfromthe point share exchange, Loadstone is a good help when trying tounderstandyour current location or find a point of interest. It is simple toaskLoadstone what the nearest point is or to get the direction anddistanceto a point you wish to reach. Loadstone is not a substitute for a longcaneor a guide dog, but it is a useful addition to your existing method of mobility. How to look up an Internet map to get latitude and longitude There is a web site athttp://stevemorse.org/jcal/latlon.php with a search facility that is verysimple and will give you the latitude and Longitude of any town orlargevillage in Ireland, or anywhere else in the world. It will also do the reverse. If you capture a point with loadstone you can look it up onthiswebsite to get the street address. Ronan found that it usually givesthecorrect street name in Dublin but the address number of the house isonlyan approximation. Comparison of Loadstone with other location systems Unlike mapping systems which some of us have over a year's experienceof,Loadstone stands out as the only viable and cost effective option forthevisually impaired who wish to be told at any time exactly where theyareon the surface of the earth. (yes, you can use it anywhere on the surfaceofthe earth, even at the poles though we haven't tried this yet!). At the moment the list of already labelled points of interest is only being built by the voluntary efforts of current users. It is therefore averyrewarding project to be involved in as the information you gather willbethere for generations to come who might need it! This is the onlyprogramthat allows you to build entirely your own route to suit bus, train,orany other off the road route. It is totally portable and once one is usedtoit you will never leave it at home! Aedan has gone back to using Wayfinder for comparison purposes as heusedit for a year before getting Loadstone. He reports that his installationofWayfinder, in his circumstances, was totally sterile in that it gavenoinformation like individual bus stops, etc that he had built up with Loadstone. Wayfinder only announced the turns and was awkward in use to find eventhename of the road you have turned onto. It appears to be purely amappingprogram designed for car users, or sighted pedestrians. Ronan had previously used Mini GPs which is a program that came withtheTalks premium edition and allowed the labelling of mobile phone cells. Mini GPS can tell you the name of the mobile phone cell in which you are located. However, in Dublin the cells can be quite large (3 or four kilometres across in places). Obviously this only gives you a very approximate location.Onthe Dublin Dart train system the mobile phone cells often include more than one station so it is not a foolproof method of identifying location. Loadstone by contrast gives you a location that can be accurate toabout 5metres. Saving points to the Point share website Each of us collected many points. The Loadstone-gps website provides a database for sharing points. Over the past few months we have added several hundreds of Irish places to the point share exchange. Coverage of points in Ireland today Before we started using Loadstone, a number of Irish points had beenaddedto the exchange. We are pleased to report that we have jointly added several hundred more. We have captured all Dart stations from Bray to Tara Street and allGreenline Luas stations from Sandyford to Stephens green. We have saved alotof points in the Dun Laoghaire Dalkey area and also in Dublin 4. Ronanwenthill walking on the Wicklow Way and has saved several points along the route and elsewhere in County Wicklow. In Cork Aedan has added many points for Cork city centre, West cork asfaras Clonakilty, and in East Cork from Fermoy to Dungarvan and in Waterfordasfar as Lismore, Waterford City, and Dunmore East. Cearbhall has collected most of the stations from Heuston station,Dublinto Waterford together with many points along the M50 from Bray toSandyford.Problems we encountered with Loadstone Ronan had problems with the Holux GPS unit not getting a signal buthasnow resolved this problem. Cearbhall found that the interest points marked on the Bray seafront change each time he goes out. The change is small and not important whennotingbuildings alongside the route. However, a series of four rubbish binsthatcreate a hazard for a blind pedestrian and are spaced about ten metres apart, are reported by loadstone as being in significantly different locations every time one passes. The accuracy of current technologycanvary a bit from day to day and we are experiencing typical accuraciesofabout 5 to 10 metres. The Wikipedia article we mentioned above givesavery good explanation of the factors that affect location accuracy. We have got to grips with the peculiar way Holux works. You need toswitchit on in an area with a guaranteed signal and wait about 30 secondsbeforestarting loadstone on the mobile phone. If you do this it works fine afterwards. If you start it in an area with a bad signal (for exampleon acrowded train) then it often goes into a strange mode and won't see a satellite signal until re-booted. We find that switching Holux off andonagain with the switch on the Holux box works fine to get it backworkingagain, provided you wait about 60 seconds, and we found that werarelyneeded to re-boot the phone. Aedan found that in order to get an accurate direction of travel itwasnecessary to walk fairly quickly. There is a feature built into theGPSunits called Static Navigation that is the cause of this. Werecommendthat the Static Navigation feature be turned off. If you get a unit with Static Navigation turned on, you will either have to walk quickly to get a direction or go through a somewhat complex process to turn thisfeatureoff. The Loadstone program itself can be a little confusing in its layoutandwe have contributed through the email discussion list to a more logical layout in certain parts of the newer versions. Next steps We have no hesitation in recommending this product or, more correctly, project as a fine example of the blind helping themselves to create a fantastically useful tool to assist orientation. We would encourageothervisually impaired people in Ireland to try it out. If we worktogether wecan build up a rich store of points on the point share exchange. Looking to the future we expect technology to change fairly rapidly. Loadstone-GPS currently works on the second edition Symbian phones.As ofnow it doesn't work on the 3rdrd edition. Hopefully this will changeovertime. We expect that over time GPS technology will rapidly improve and GPS chipsets will be built into mobile phones. Further, it is assumedthatthe new European GPS system Galileo, currently being built, withseveralsatellites already put into orbit, will have an accuracy level of centimetres. This would mean that in a few years, if we still have an accessible system like Loadstone-GPS, we will be able to find thedoor,not just the building as at the moment! We are in touch with the Ordnance Survey of Ireland (OSI) to see iftheirmaps can be imported into Loadstone. We will also examine the OSI'SOWNGPS programs to see if they can be used by a blind person in a laptop or mobile phone. --- Report ends. -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.410 / Virus Database: 268.16.10/624 - Release Date: 12/01/2007