Looking for Feedback on Voice Cam

By Gian Piero Gigli, 9 April, 2014

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hi all,

I have just launched a new app Voice Cam that reads english words detected by the camera.

The App is very simple to use, you can read features about at this link or on iTunes Store .

Voice Cam support VoiceOver. 

Voice Cam doesn't need internet connection. 

Options

Comments

By Williamchow1 on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

Hi Glan, could you tell me how go enter promotional code after entering install the app? It still shows $2.99. Thanks! William

By Gian Piero Gigli on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

Hi William, to use promotional code you don't have buy App, but you can follow more details at follow link .

It possibile use one promotional code only one time; if a promotional code has been already used by an other user, before you, you can't use. 

Gian Piero

By Brooke on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

It looks like the codes have all been used. Hoping the people who used them will post some feedback on the app so we can get an idea of what it does and how it works.

By Khalfan Bin Dhaher on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

Any promo code for this app? I got no credit in my account.

By alex wallis on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

Hi all, I purchased this app, and will describe my experiences with it. Firstly if you search for voice cam in the app store you get 208 results, you need to make sure you get the right voice cam app as there is at least one other app called voice cam, but it isn't the one you want, I had to actually go into the apps to make sure I got the right one. The voice cam app created by this developer is listed as being buy INFOGP. So, on to describe this app, when you launch the app you have one button on the screen labelled as start, when you double tap this button you then have a screen with a button on it labelled as settings and an edit field labelled as text entry. If you tap the settings button you are presented with options for setting the reading voice and this gives you the different English voice options available in ios such as US English, UK English etc. You have a button for turning the flash on or off, and lastly you have options for setting the reading speed, however this is a series of buttons labelled as slow, normal or fast, it isn't possible for the user to really flexibly choose there own speed, and actually I don't see the point of this feature given that the app is making use of ios's own voices, surely it would be much better to allow VoiceOver to do the reading itself and also not force the user to make use of such an inflexible way of controlling speed. So, on to my experience with the app, well to be honest I spent a good 15 or 20 minutes with it and wasn't able to get a single bit of text recognized. I also found that at no point did the app give feedback during the scanning process after pressing start, you literally just press start then have the screen I described above but no feedback at all with what the app is doing. To be fair to this app I tried using text detective on the same item I was scanning, a cardboard case for cds and was able to get legible text within a few minutes. I would suggest that at the moment this app really isn't worth the money, given the lack of feedback, and that people are far more likely to get good results with apps such as text detective my personal favourite or even prismo which although a mainstream app which is difficult to use even gives feedback on if the page is focused. It really feels to me like this app hasn't been tested with real blind people and I couldn't recommend it at the moment. It should also be remembered that any text recognition app isn't going to be a magic bullet because they are all limited by the skill of the user and the iPhones own camera. These are my experiences however and if other users have more positive ones then I would be very interested in hearing them especially those who grabbed the promo codes. I am sorry to have to write such negative comments but I have to be honest and although it is nice to see a developer trying it just isn't very good for me at the moment however I hope this doesn't put the developer off from trying to make future improvements.

By Gian Piero Gigli on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

Hi Alex, Thanks for buying Voice Cam and thanks for your feedback. I’m working to next release and feedback are very useful to develop an App. Gian Piero

By AppleVis on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team
The developer of Voice Cam has given the AppleVis community 10 promo codes for the app. Specifically, he is looking for multiple users to provide feedback and to enter the app into the iOS App Directory. If you are interested in testing this app and providing him feedback, please reply below and we will send a promo code to you using the email address on file in your account.

By Deng on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

Hi there, i would like to help. i have an iphone 5, if that matters any.

By Joseph on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

I too would like to test this app. You may send the promo code to my email address that is registered on Applevis.

By Khalfan Bin Dhaher on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

In reply to by AppleVis

I've been looking for a way to test this app and give you my opinion. You can contact me by sending a code to my registered email with AppleVis.

By Chris Norman on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

Hi Gian, I just tried your app, and I actually think it's pretty awesome! I have no problem paying the £1.99 - anyone who does should really go out and buy themselves a beer or something. I personally think anyone who's going out of their way to making an app I can use deserves at least some thanks, so enjoy whatever iTunes pass along! :-) The app doesn't give you any guidance while you're pointing the camera, but then it doesn't pretend too, and actually, I have no idea programatically how you'd do that. When I aimed it at my little box of guitar strings, nothing was read, which isn't surprising, as it's got stickers and stuff stuck all over it. When I pointed it at my computer screen however, it read a few words. My only slight gripe (and please don't take this the wrong way), is that it vibrates whenever a word is recognised, which leads to mild white finger if you try something like you laptop screen (which I did). Perhaps have an option for how often you want alerts? Default to once a second or something, to stop your phone from trying to take off! :-) The other thing I though was, instead of having a text box (which doesn't actually get populated with anything), why not have some kind of area in the center where the words would go? I'm not sure how it appears graphically, but certainly to VoiceOver, it just seems that the words are read, then they vanish... With the wild vibrations I found that my device was stopping to read a word, to get onto the next word. Perhaps have it just queue the words up to read them? A touch on that part of the screen (in the middle where the text field is now perhaps?) could silence the speech, so it was ready for the next bunch of words. Anyways, just my thoughts, and keep up the good work! Take care, -- Chris Norman.

By Chris Norman on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

People, people, people! It's £1.99... You really need a promo code? :P

By Michael Hansen on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team
Chris, Please understand that the developer gave these promo codes away in the hope that users will, in return, give him constructive feedback about his app. So, it really is not a question of whether people are willing to pay for the app when the primary point of the promo code giveaway is to receive feedback and get some awareness.

By Brooke on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

I may be late on this, but if there are any promo codes left, I'd like to test this app.

By Gian Piero Gigli on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

Hi Chris, thanks for buying Voice Cam and thanks for your feedback. Gian Piero

By Gian Piero Gigli on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

Hi all, thanks to all for your feedback. Gian Piero

By Jennifer on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

Would love to help test this app is I still haven't found anything as good or even close to the knfb mobile.

By Khalfan Bin Dhaher on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

Thank you for providing us with a such great app that quickly identifies words using the iOS camera. The app is very simple, easy, and good for those who want to read handouts or a peace of paper. however, the app needs to be improved to quickly recognise words when pointing the camera. The app is not useful for reading a whole page or a sheet of paper. I am still testing the app and trying to read what's written in some objects such as a box of medicine.

By remixman on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

If there are any more available, I'll totally help. Thanks.

By Serena on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

hiya. i too would be interested in helping to test the app. this sounds rather handy to have, specially when it comes to reading computer screens during painfully non accessible installation screens, or those just loveley letters that like to appear in my letter box, demanding to be paid. lol. either way, sounds interesting, and i'd love to help play with it and find out bugs / come up with ideas as to how to make the app better.

By ikrami on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

It will be a pleasure for me to test the voice cam app. Kindly send me a promo code if available. Thanks in advance

By Khafsa2015 on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

Interested in testing the app :) Khafsa

By Michael Hansen on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team
Thanks everyone who requested a promo code for Voice Cam! All of the promo codes that Gian Piero has provided have now been sent out to users. Regards, Michael Hansen AppleVis Editorial Team

By remixman on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

I've had this for all of 5 minutes, and I'm definitely going to continue playing with it. First impressions: Definitely there should be some sort of help/instructional button somewhere that specifically talks about camera positioning relative to text. I started it up and there was a "start" button with not much else; to find the message on the screen, I had to actually tap it somewhere; VoiceOver didn't detect it, for some odd reason. I put a sheet of paper with printed text under the camera and so far it hasn't read anything, though that's probably just an issue with camera positioning (or maybe I have he page upside down, I'm not sure). Nevertheless, thus far this app could really benefit from some sort of help dialog somewhere. Edit: I did get it to read some text on the paper, but it was only like five words. The vibration is definitely a help (for the unaware, it vibrates when it finds words), but it never read anything automatically. (I'm not sure if it's supposed to read automatically or not; if it is supposed to, it's not currently.) I had much better luck with a computer screen, which seems to me like a great use case for this app. It read me several lines of text off of my screen. In this case, though, the vibrations did get kind of annoying. Maybe add a configureable length of time before you get an alert so the phone doesn't continuously vibrate. Cheers.

By Khalfan Bin Dhaher on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

I have tested the app for the second time, things use to work ok for the first few minutes and then it stopped recognising words. I have tested this app on an iPhone 5S running iOS 7.1 while sitting in a lighting area trying to identify whats written in a sheet of paper and a medicine box. I pointed the camera to the right direction but something seems wrong with the camera positioning in this app. Also, there isn't any instruction guide in the main interface. The speech rate under settings is set to normal and it still speaks slow. Unfortunately it is not possible to make multiple changes under settings once.

By Brooke on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

I've tested this app a few times. First was on a box of instant oatmeal, after I'd had someone sighted help me point it at the words on the box. I had no luck there, so tried a printed piece of paper. Still no luck, so I made an attempt, as others had, on my computer screen. I did have some success with this. In each attempt, I made sure the lighting in the room was decent.

By Gian Piero Gigli on Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 05:59

Thank you all for the feedback. Some technical information on the Voice Cam release 1.0.0. The area of the screen that detects the words is about 20% and is on the top of the screen. In the next release I'm thinking of increasing it. Voice Cam reads Arial, Times New Roman, Verdana and other very similar. Artistic font, such as those sometimes used in advertising, are often not detectable by Cam Voice. You have to move the device slowly, especially when a word is detected, in this way the app continues to recognize the possible words nearby. Good lighting is important for the detection of words.

By Gian Piero Gigli on Saturday, May 24, 2014 - 05:59

Hi all, Voice Cam version 1.1.1 is now on App Store.
Some of your suggestions have been very useful for the development of the new version.
Thanks to your suggestions and feedback!
App's name now is Voice Cam - for Blind and Visually Impaired
Now there is a button to start and stop reading and so, user can decides when to start reading.
Now, there is voice guidance to help with camera position.
Voice Guidance says where is text relative to the camera.
When Voice Cam detects words, play short sound and after if you move device and words are lost, a vocal message automatically says: no words detected.
There is Number words button useful to say number words detected.
Now, in this versione there is fullscreen area to detect text.
Feedback and suggestions are always welcome.