Experiences with the we walk smart cane

Firstly, welcome to the forums! It's always great to have a new face on here.

There was another discussion on here a couple of months ago about this which may be of interest: https://mail.applevis.com/forum/assistive-technology/wewalk-smart-cane-2-comprehensive-upgrade-enhanced-mobility-independence

I've not used it myself but it sounds like it has pros and cons like most things.

It's not for me but if you can get your hands on the thing, you can then try it. I'll warn you though, I have read on reddit that someone had an issue getting a refund from them. This was a couple of months back or more but it's best to know these things just in case.

Hi,

Welcome to the forums!

I would recommend having a look through the thread that was posted above. However, here is the comment I added there a couple of months ago.

"I too had the first generation and pre-ordered the WEWalk Smart Cane 2 not long after it was announced. I tried it for a couple of weeks and then sent it back for a refund.
I'll start with the positives. The new design is fantastic! It feels so much nicer to use and more like a traditional white cane, and the buttons are certainly much easier to use than the touchpad. I found that often the touchpad wouldn't respond to gestures especially while you were moving, but the buttons can easily be pressed while still on the move. The obstacle detection also works really well. The first generation was very over-sensitive in my opinion even on the lowest setting, but it's genuinely useful on the second generation version.
There were two major dealbreakers for me. The first thing was the battery life. I charged the cane when I first received it and the battery was at 100%. I went through the setup, did some basic testing and the battery was still at 100%. I then left the cane powered off next to my front door, ready to use it the next day. I came back to it the next morning (around 12 hours later) to find the device dead. Completely dead. Would not power up... Nothing. I plugged it into charge and it immediately started up with a "low battery" warning.
Thinking that it could've been my error (leaving it powered on for example), I charged it up fully again and made certain it was powered off. When I returned to it the next day, a similar thing happened. Rather than the device being completely dead, this time it powered up, announced "low battery" and immediately powered off again. So it wasn't quite as dead as last time, but still useless as a smart cane. I did contact WeWalk in case I had a faulty unit, but apparently they were aware of the issue and were working on a firmware update to fix this. I then learned that I was not the only one who was experiencing this issue. According to users on a couple of Facebook groups that I'm part of, others were affected so badly by this battery issue that they couldn't use their cane at all if it was not plugged in.
Yes, it can be used as a normal cane if the tech fails and that is one advantage of a product like this, but it is an insane price for essentially a standard cane.
The second issue that made me return the device was related to the navigation. WeWalk offer a feature they describe as multi-modal navigation. Let's say for example you had a route that involved some walking directions, then a bus journey, and then more walking to get to your final destination, WeWalk can give you all those directions in the one app. It will first give you walking directions to the bus stop, when you arrive at the bus stop it will then let you know when your bus is arriving, once you get on the bus it will let you know where to get off, and when you're off it will go back to walking directions.
The advantage of the cane was meant to be that you can control these directions hands-free. In our previous example, when you have located the bus stop, you could use the cane's touchpad to tell the app you had arrived and to move onto the next step rather than having to take your phone out of your pocket or bag, same for when you get on and off the bus and need to switch back to walking directions. This worked well on the first generation cane, but there was no way to access these controls on the second generation cane as the gesture you would use on the touchpad was not mapped to any of the physical buttons. This, in my opinion, was a significant downgrade as you still needed to use the app on your phone to control that aspect of the navigation, completely defeating the hands-free nature of being able to do everything on the cane. Again I contacted WeWalk, and was told that they would pass this onto their product development team.
Considering this was a second generation product, and the shipping of pre-orders was delayed by around 6 months, these felt like extremely basic issues/features that had been overlooked and made it very hard for me to justify the price paid. I believe a firmware update has since been released to address the battery issue, but this was released after I had returned mine so I can't comment on whether this has fixed the issue.
Ultimately I love the idea of what WeWalk are trying to do, but once again the end product just did not deliver on the promise for me.
Of course the above is just my opinion though. As I rely on public transport every day, the lack of hands-free control of this was a big deal, but this may not matter to you. Your milage may very as they say."

Since that was posted, I believe there has been an update to address the battery drain issues as I said, and I think the issue with not being able to move between the navigation steps using the cane buttons has also been resolved, however I can't confirm either of these. I certainly won't be spending the money on it again to try it.

I have had extremely good luck with the generation one we walk smart cane. For a first run of a product it has done really well. I'm still trying to figure out why in the world they put a touchpad on the device for the blind. I guess it was the thing for that time when it was created. I don't use the touchpad so I can't really comment on its functionality. The app is really well designed. The smart cane itself works well. I have not tried the generation two yet. I would like to. If you can get a demo of the wee walk, then I think you can reach a better decision. At least, a more informed decision.
In regards to the obstacle detection: I have found that it works quite well. I guess that some people might consider it a bit on the fiddly side, but if you think about the fact that the device is a first run device, then it puts it into more perspectiv sometimes I believe that people are too critical of a device when it first comes out. No matter how much testing a company does when they have a small group of people that are doing the testing no cases can cover every little thing. I can say that the company behind the wWe walk is very concerned with their customers feedback.
I know we are on the second generation of the smart cane. When you think about the fact of all the miniaturization that went into the second generation of the smart cane, there is no wonder that there are some small issues that have to be ironed out. Also, the fact that it is waterproof now is a great benefit. I have always been in fear that my poor we walk would get drowned and a torrential downpour and I would no longer have a smart cane. I have babied this wee walk since I got it. That's not a criticism just merely an observation.