The other, very personal, reason I've decided to take the plunge with the Seleste smart glasses

After reading this link on Monday, I immediately. Ordered the glasses. I'm excited about the ability to read or. Discover objects without having to pull out my phone and bring up a program.

Wow, we've seen a lot of orders come in from the AppleVis community! I just wanted to say thank you. Everyone here seems like such a techie which is really cool.
We definitely have a lot of things to continue improving with our product and I'm looking forward to continue building this with the people getting our glasses!

Hey there Shubh,

I just wanted to say, I'm so excited to get mine!

And, great job on the Seleste YouTube channel! I've subscribed on there, and love the content!
Keep up the great work, and I look forward to seeing what is to come and what is in store!
😀💙

Long but hopefully worthwhile post ahead. I'm probably combining some portions of different threads here, so bear with me!
1. Subscription model--I personally like the idea of a subscription model and find the pricepoint reasonable, especially given updated firm and software that comes with it. That said, I can understand why those who may be relying on government assistance or have an extremely limited budget want to be able to pay once. To provide some insight to the Seleste folks reading this, many blind and disabled people get what can be expensive assistive technology like this as part of a program from their school or at least in the U.S., state vocational rehabilitation services. Traditionally, these programs would pay for a piece of assistive technology, give it to the person, and upon completion of that program, the participant gets to keep the technology for their job or independent living use. As you can see, a subscription model becomes problematic here because that program cannot pay for the technology indefinitely. *insert head shakes by all rehab Tec or counselors reading this* Anyway, might I propose a model similar to what Freedom Scientific did with Jaws? You get a monthly subscription or, for a certain price, get a package which is a period of time plus X amount of updates. Pro tip, just paying for a year of service may be able to happen, but having defined packages will help when working with state agencies that have to track a bunch of stuff for auditing purposes.
2. Sustainable funding--Is there any way to find out who is behind funding this product? Venture capitalists, angel investors, government grants, some combination of the above? I am worried that when initial rounds of funding run out, prices may suddenly rise to cover true costs associated with running the technology behind the opperation of the glasses? A good case study for this is what happened to AIRA after they needed to increase prices dramatically for those needing assistance similar to what Seleste provides. What saved AIRA was having relationships with large companies and airports who they could charge high prices to cover their expenses. For the common person though, this makes even the bass plan for a working professional making decent money nearly out of reach.
3. Security--One place where technology like this could be very useful is in places where reading screens is important. My concern is where the text we read goes? I mean, who cares if it's a book, but accessing secure information in the workplace, reading a credit card number, or medication administration details is a totally different ball game. How can we count on information not getting into the hands of bad actors?
To be clear, this feels like the best option out there thus far and I want it to succeed wildly. So, please know I'm asking these questions/making these proposals in that light. Thanks for any responses!

I believe the pictures are uploaded then destroyed.

Thanks for saying that. Good to see someone else reading on here lol. Yes, if you want to own them it’s $3000 USD now can we let this subscription thing go? 😂 🤦

I'm one of the people who ordered yesterday because of this thread. Any idea when these will actually be shipped? Very excited to see them but I'd say it wasn't all too clear on the site that the pre-order was still a pre-order with no current release date...

Have fun.

I don't honestly know exactly what i'd use these for, I don't really go anyware but it'll be fun to see what they can do.

Also, I'll probbably end up making a podcast on these, i'd like others to know what they're buying before buying them.

Some more answers to questions
1) Funding and pricing - We got some good funding and our business model is sustainable although to be completely honest we may need to up the upfront price to $150 from $100. We have no other price increases that we're thinking about for the subscription or anything else and haven't implemented the $50 increase yet so we'll see. Also of course this won't affect anyone who already paid for the glasses.

2) Security and storing text - We don't store any images right now. We are considering a feature where we will email you the photo with a description if you ask our assistant to. Other than that we also store the text the AI reads for our assistant to reference so you can ask questions like who did I get that letter from last week. On the app is a button to delete all of this stored text if you want as well and no one on the dev team looks at any of this info.

3) Someone asked about shipping, we'll be shipping the glasses around mid-march for our next batch.

4) Lastly you're right we do really need to update our website! in the meantime if you have any questions feel free to email me at shubh@seleste.co and i'll answer!

It’s not a hope it’s a reality. I’ve been actually using the glasses for a while now. Also regarding the sight, I had no problems ordering and those buttons you mentioned are just click between the clear frames and the tinted frames. Other than that the ordering process is very smooth.

Keep in mind that everything is still in beta as well. It’s very much in its infancy stage but don’t let that deter you. They of course need subscribers/users to improve.

This needs to be fixed ASAP, I've emailed shub about switching my card details over, I can get a much cheeper conversion rate when paying $50 a month, with wise vs my bank, but wouldn't have to do that if we had an account where we can change all that on the fly if we need to.

Also my cuzzon brought up a great point, what happens if your card expires, paying an extra $100 for a new pair of glasses would be silly so yeah, we need an account.

i'm sure this will be added but in my oppinion it needs to take priority if you want to look like a company that is sirious.

I'm looking forward to trying these but i'm mostly looking forward to when they ad a compass feature so we can have maps, i'm so excited about that.

I know some may say I jumped and ordered too soon, but I'm so excited anyway.
When I ordered, LOL nothing could stop me!
Anyway, can't wait to get mine!

And that’s the most exciting thing. Eventually artificial intelligence will get to the point where we don’t need any sided assistance for anything. I’m seriously considering becoming an investor.

hope I get to try them sometime between now and 10 years from now, when it comes in Spanish. so keep buying/renting them until the company wants to expand to other language markets.

They'll probably add new languages within the next year, I'd not be surprised if Spanish is added then.

cannot wate!!! that is all

Hi Shub, since you update stuff regularly, could there be a feature added where someone needs to opt in to the saving of text? Again, an angle I am beginning to look into is how this could be used to benefit people needing to read text normally inaccessible on a screen. I'm concerned work places will not let the technology be used without some kind of control on how text is saved. I'm sure you have this stuff in acknowledgements when agreeing to things in the app, but just an idea to have that disabled from the get go and someone can turn the feature on if allowed. Again, amazing product and I can't wait to order it!

Shub was nice enough to give me a refund on the glasses as I didn't feel they'd be very useful to me in their current state.

I'm not giving up on them though, either late this year or early next,, I'm thinking of giving them another try, depending on what they can do of course.

Can you give us a bit more information. I understand you don't have enough information/experience to make a podcast maybe, but could you let us know why what you found to be dissatisfactory about them?. This is so we can share information and hopefully improve what needs improving

Things are going to be improved. I spoke to Shub a couple of times about it over the last month.

I don't need glasses to read text to me or anything like that because I have a phone and apps for free. I don't care if there's a bird outside or whatever so I don't need that feature either.

I do care about getting out and about so after a month or so after summer, or perhaps even next year, give it a bit of time to squosh bugs and get updated, I'll try the glasses again, they'll have map functionality by then. I'm basically looking for something like the WeWalk but much better.

All I can find are Inns.

Ok so for me I'd like a full mobility aid. Turn by turn directions,, with asking where am I and it updating to tell you how many feet/metres/other measure you'd like to use, asking about shops around you, if a door is open, what's the price of a menu item, how many steps are there going up, whens the next train, where's platform 4, that kind of stuff.

Of course this would all be toggleable with speech, so you'd not be bombarded with info you didn't want nor need.

No! We want the talking robo-dog! There used to be a TV show back in the late 70s called "Battlestar Galactica" with a robotic dog-like creature, or even that movie, "C.H.O.M.P.S." We were promised robo-dogs by science fiction, and that's what we want!
Eh, I couldn't afford one anyway.

I'm holding out for Astro. That doggie talked, too.

I probably couldn't find it because I'm in the UK and just typed in glyde.

This might help people get around depending on how bulky it is and how useful.

I guess we'll see how things go in the future.

For now I think I'd prefer the glasses but you never know.

I'm going to sight village this year and next to see what comes of this AI stuff, it'll be fun.

Of course I'm ready!

I'm signing up write now and I think I might have found a new favorite site.

Is it the biped.ai one?

Ooo, new toys to play with, I want!

I've signed up to glyde, I can't wait to actually use it, it sounds tonnes of fun!

Thanks to you I'll be able to keep up to date when it comes to all this cool tech AI stuff.

Isn't there an AI for that?

You can email the company and see what they say.

it's another subscription moddle and like the guy on the podcast said, I'm really not a fan of that, i'd rather pay outright than monthly.

Honestly I'm not a huge fan of this tech, I'd not mind trying it and maybe I'll grow to love it but at the moment it's blind tech and it's something you have to put on every day so imagine wearing this with a bag, I think it could get a bit much where as the glide is a device you don't have to wear

Just a gentle reminder folks that this is an Apple forum. Even the hardware and accessories forum should stick to products that you use in conjunction with Apple products.
Many thanks.
PS - I’ve ordered the Seleste glasses myself, really looking forward to giving them a spin.
Dave

The glide uses your phone for maps and sso does the Biped.

The dog in Battle star galactica did not talk but his name was muffin. Dr. Who did have a dog name K 9 who talk.

Correction. The dog was name muffy. It did not talk. K 9 did.