So, for whatever mad reason, I've started collecting books. I've reached the point in my life where I want to be surrounded by the words of the wise in the vague hope that, through some magical osmosis, I will catch some of that wisdom...
I also feel that a book unread is a stupid book... Or the person who bought it is stupid... Or something.
What devices are you aware of that can allow me to read a real hardback book without too much fuss and recalling that most books are 300 pages plus?
I know there are options with things like Seeing AI, but I'm thinking a dedicated device might do things better without having to line things up six hundred times or more. I was thinking of something where I just plop the book face down on a roof-like device that reads both pages... But that seems like a far too sensible design to have been created.
Short of building something myself with my trusty 3d printer, fearless Raspberry Pi, and my somewhat timid maker skills, is there anything out there that can decant this knowledge into the void of my mind?
Thank you.
Comments
Neta
I know I'm gonna get some negativity for this, but if you have a pair, I would recommend Meta smart glasses. Ever since they added the ability to have things described briefly or with detail, I have found that reading my snail mail on my own has been a huge blessing on my independence. You see, I am not ashamed to admit that I used to have a friend come over and read my mail to me.
There's no reason why you can't have Meta smart glasses read a physical book, be it hardcover or paperback. It's all a matter of positioning the book just right, and making sure that you are in a comfortable position. In other words, don't be hunched over a countertop, or table, and try to read a book this way. That's OK for mail, which is typically as little as a single page, and no more than five or six pages.
For a full book though, you might earn yourself a nice backache.
HTH.
Meta still summarises
Just busted out my Ray-Bans hoping for some improvement here but it's still summarising. I think the issue is the token window is too short to read an entire page of a novel verbatim. It's certainly more detailed than it was, impressively so, but it's not going to read something so data dense.
I've also used it for letters but they tend to have far fewer words per page though, I'm not convinced it's not making some of it up.
It's a shame. it's the perfect form factor. Fingers crossed there will be a decent OCR app with something like Eleven Labs to vocalise come the meta wearable SDK adoption.
For now, it's back to the drawing board... Maybe a good thing as I'm itching to buy the Oakly Vanguards.
Also, I should say, I'm in the UK where live AI still isn't available so it might well be that we just get the crappier version of meta AI with shorter context windows.
Fair enough
I forget that you guys over there don't get the full Monty when it comes to the Meta smart glasses. I do have a question, do you have the ability to go into your Meta AI application, and go all the way over to the accessibility heading under your SmartGlass settings, and choose between brief and detailed descriptions? I have mindset to detailed, and it makes reading documents etc. far more informative.
Also, I too am saving up for the Oakley vanguards. I have been wanting a pair of wrap-around smart glasses for a while now.
Docment Camera
Assuming you don't want to do the old college hack of chopping the spine off the book and dumping the pages in a sheet fed scanner... A document camera may be your best bet? Ipevo is one such brand, there are many now. They are essentially cameras on a stand so the camera is held overhead.