 And we're live. Hey guys, welcome to the Charbox interview. My name is Bailey Pearson, and I am with the team that is bringing you E-Glass, and I would like to introduce you to this illuminated glass writing board with a built-in camera that camera captures my face and my writing in the same window. So it's very engaging for anyone on the other end, whether I'm live streaming to an online class or teaching my students live in the classroom, E-Glass is a fantastic tool that blends the content with the connection face to face, and it's embedding my face in this screen. So I'd like to introduce you to my team. Here we have Ji Shen, he's the founder and CEO of Hovercam, and we are the makers of this product. And I'd also like to introduce you to Dr. Matt Anderson. Dr. Anderson is the inventor of this glass board technology where you write on the glass and you put a camera on the other end of the glass and it captures all of the writing and that camera flips the image. So I don't have to write backwards and you don't have to learn how to read backwards. So this is a really engaging tool and I'm excited to show it to you guys today. So it's a real glass. It's like a physical glass. You're not doing something virtual there. You're actually writing on a... Does it feel like writing on a blackboard? It feels like writing on a whiteboard. Yeah, it is real glass and it's right in front of me. So what you see on your screen, I see it myself too. I can see the ink, right? Cause I'm writing with these expo dry erase markers and I can see the ink as it's coming out. So it's a glass board. It's right here in front of me. Node gimmicks or tricks. And it's easy to wipe off? Oh, it's so easy to wipe off. I'm just gonna use a rag, just like you would with a dry erase marker. It wipes off clean and clear, just like that. So you could be writing millions of things on it and it's like durable? That's true. Years and years? Years and years. It's very durable. It's a strong piece of glass. And actually the glass is special. It's very scratch resistant. So it's gonna stand the test of time. We know teachers in their classrooms are, you know, the classroom is almost a war zone sometimes. Kids throwing stuff around, bumping into things. So we had to make it really strong and sturdy. So the idea is to keep the eye contact with the students. Isn't it a little bit like the idea? You wanna be present, be right there. Is that a little bit the idea? And maybe G, you can explain that. Did you invent this product? Well, Matt and I met, it was about eight months ago and I always say this is like in met again. So together we formed this perfect circle and that is the E-glass. So we, Matt was inventing, he invented this glass and technology in this, Bailey already demonstrated. You know, one of the magic things is that the writing on it glows, that catches. How does that work? The glowing, what is the technology that's happening right there? We call it a chroma clear or a lumaclear technology and it has a proprietary light. That is injected into the glass and the glass is also made special. It does not lose clarity or the light intensity throughout. So it's evenly distributed. And also you could see no smudges on the screen. Well, I actually see smudges on my side. So these are things that make this whole image is pretty clear. You have one right there, are you using it right now? I'm using it right now. And also this is coupled with the digital imaging and the software technology all together. So it gives you the perfect depth of field focal lengths and the field of view and there's no distortion. And then the glass is just a glass and the camera is there. But what makes this whole thing works is that everything kind of come together magically in the software on the computer. So I'm plugged into a Mac. I think Bailey is plugged into a PC. So I have this right in front of me. So the idea is really you want the teacher's face to be embodied with the content. So when the teacher is teaching in this way or the presenter is presenting, the gaze of the presenter and the body movement of the presenter really direct the audience attention to the desired subject area. And this increases engagement and also kind of help restore that connection that we, the human connection that is often lost in a distance learning, remote learning or a video conferencing setting. So you could be teaching right directly from home. You like you're at home right now, for example. Yeah, let me teach a mini lesson. I think I have a great solution for global warming. Let me talk about it. Yeah, let me show it to you. Because I think if we have fewer cars then there's less emissions. So every family instead of getting two cars, I think you can just buy one car. So let me prove, I want to prove one equals two. That solves global warming, I think. I'm gonna prove that by letting a variable a equals to a variable b. And let me time a on both sides. So a squared equals b a. Now I'm gonna miss b squared from both sides. Now I break this down into a plus b times a minus b and this side becomes b times a minus b. So missing a parent there. So, so far so good. I think I'm doing every step right. And then I have a minus b on both sides. So I just crossed that out. Now it becomes a plus b equals b. But wait a second, I let a equal b in the very beginning. So I substitute this a with b. So b plus b equals b. Now this is two b and this is one b on this side. Now I cross out b, two equals one. So I just prove to you two equals one or one equals two. Solve global warming. But okay, so this is related with the global warming. But anyway, you can do like all these, like Khan Academy like 10 years ago was doing these amazing online tutorials. All these millions of children around the world learning mathematics. But this could be a way for the teacher to actually be there and not just be anonymous, right? Not just be a voice. Exactly. In fact, we've found that not only for distance learning, E-Glass is also really good for teaching in the classroom. In fact, Dr. Anderson has had a ton of experience using this Glassboard technology in his classroom. Matt, would you mind talking a little bit about your experience and how your students felt when you were using E-Glass? Oh, of course. I'm still reeling from G's proof that two equals one, I'm gonna have to give up my career in physics. So my name is Matt Anderson. I'm a professor of physics at San Diego State University. I started developing a learning glass lightboard technology about 10 years ago. We started a company about five years ago. And then like G said, about eight months ago, we started working with Hovercam on a real integrated unit. And the problem that I was trying to solve, which Nicholas, you've already identified, is if you're gonna post videos online, you can do it like Khan Academy, right? Which is the ghost hand writing with a digital pen. Or you can turn your back to the camera and write on the whiteboard. And I didn't really like either of those. I really wanted to get the eye contact with my students. So that's why I developed Learning Glass Lightboard Technology. And it was put it on a piece of glass, focus your gaze right there where your students are and talk directly to them. I've been using this in my class for 10 years. I've posted all my videos up on YouTube. You can check out my YouTube page at Yo Prof Matt. That's my handle. Every other version of Matt Anderson was taken. And the students absolutely love it. They love watching these videos. They love watching my face, my gestures, connecting with my eye gaze as I give them a lecture. And like Bailey said, I've also used it in the classroom. So in my large auditorium class, I have a small e-glass at the front of the room and then I connect to the projector. And now everybody in the room, whether they're in the front row or the back row, can see the writing clearly. They can see my face. They can see all my gestures. It's really providing a new level of connection, not only in the online setting, but also in the face-to-face classroom. And Bailey alluded to this, but one of the greatest things about e-glass is it's gonna work perfectly in a hybrid environment. If you have a class, a K through 12 class, and you have 10 students in your class and another 10 at home, if you teach those 10 in your room on e-glass and stream out that content to everybody else at home, now all the students are getting the exact same content at the exact same time. It really is digital equity, right? It is promoting this idea that every student is gonna get the same education. So we're super excited about it. It's turning the whole thing hybrid, right? Because you don't wanna have the, you don't wanna have what happens in the class be different than what you could re-watch later or watch from home or... Exactly, exactly. And Bailey's showing you one of my lessons on electronics, which I teach in my second semester physics class. And as you'll notice, I'm wearing the exact same shirt. To be fair, I own like 10 of these, so. So do you have like, I see you standing up. So it's possible to stand up and, is that the big one or what's the size of the product? Yeah, so we have a 35 inch, which is sit down at your desk and right behind it. Or we have a 50 inch, which is stand up and gesture a little bit more vociferously as you stand on the stage. So either option is great. There's plenty of writing surface, lots of area for you to write your content on either size. And there's a lot of people watching your videos, right? Yeah, there are. I mean, I couldn't believe it. When I started my YouTube channel, I thought, oh, if I get 10,000 views, that'll be fantastic. I have like 8 million views already. And maybe that's not big for somebody like you, Nicholas, but for a physics educator, that's pretty big. And what's the response? Is there a lot of comments all the time, people saying, oh my God, what is that magical device? Is that a little bit, some of the comments? Yes, yes, yes. The first comment almost always is, look at how amazing this guy is. He can write backwards effortlessly. I hate to burst through my whole area of writing backwards. Yeah, you don't write backwards. You write normally, you do a horizontal flip of the image, and that's how the writing appears correct everybody. So like when G was writing, you noticed he was doing that derivation with his left hand. He's a right-handed guy. He's really writing with his right hand that does his horizontal flip of the image. Nice. I'm just really capable. I can do this backward with my eyes closed. So you talk about 10 years, how long has it been going on? So it started about 10 years ago at the university. So I invented learning glass light port technology at San Diego State. There was also Michael Peshkin at Northwestern, shout out to Michael who developed something exactly similar and we became friends and collaborators and we were really pursuing this academically. We were sharing the ideas with people. We were giving them build instructions. As time went on, it became more and more clear that we needed a corporate solution. People just wanted to buy a complete unit that didn't want to build their own. And so I started learning glass solutions about five years ago and we've been making and selling these learning glass light boards all over the world. I mean, Australia is a huge customer of ours, but we've sent it to Iceland and Lebanon and the UK just all over the place. And so the relationship now with G and Bailey and Hovercam is really brand new and it's really just gonna set us apart because now we have a complete unit. The old units, while great, were a little cumbersome. You had to add a camera and a microphone and everything. All of that's built into the E-glass. It is ready to go out of the box and it's just a quantum leap forward. So this could be, you could be bringing this to the mass market right now, like with this, but is this the idea, it needs to be big, right? It needs to be like, but it's brand new, this E-glass or is it? E-glass, E-glass is brand new. Yes. Yeah. This time, Mary with the glass is new and the software together really does the magic. Yeah, we think this is a brand new way of presenting your content. We call it the new medium. If you think about the last time, a medium that came along is the chalkboard and then we have the whiteboard, but consistently people have been writing with their back facing the audience. So this is the first time this is a turnkey device that enables teachers or presenters for business to write together with their face together with the content and facing the audience. And the post audience and the presenter looking at the same content kind of synergistically. So this is a brand new way, a new paradigm of presenting content. And so is there an affordable price? Sometimes the schools, they pay thousands of dollars for these interactive whiteboards, right? Are you in that kind of range? How affordable is it for schools to buy these? These are really designed to work with interactive whiteboards or interactive flat panels. So in the classroom setting, if you're not teaching from home, you do need a preview device that kind of blow up the image. So students will be looking at the interactive flat panel and the team presents from a different angle. The teacher can see the students, but students will look at the big board. It's more like if this is a room and then the teacher could stand here and students can be in the room. And this is the interactive flat panel. So students will look at here, teacher can look at them here. All right. So yeah, they work together with interactive flat panels and I think it's in a reasonable price range. So we really recommend schools should buy these together. You have two sizes? We have a 35 inch and a 50 inch. All right. Is there something in terms of the resolution of the camera? Can it do 4K or is it 1080p camera that goes out that streams out? We recommend using a 1080p 30 frame. That's the most common setting, but you can go to 4K as if that's a requirement. With 4K, the computer need to have a higher, with a higher configuration. So it all can work out. You can record in 4K, record in 1080p either way. Bailey, maybe you can talk a bit about what's been happening. I saw your presentation was for the CES, right? At the event around the show stoppers, right? So you've been doing these kind of presentations at these virtual trade shows? Yes, we have. You know, in this day and age of distance learning also comes remote events. So we have started unveiling this year E-Glass to a lot of these remote events. And we found that the best way to show people E-Glass is actually use the product to demonstrate it. So we're actually, the camera that you're seeing right now is the E-Glass camera. This whole interview is set up with just my laptop plugged into E-Glass. And I've joined the interview just through my laptop. So the setup is really easy and to participate in these virtual events is a breeze. I came in here 10 minutes before the interview. I plugged my E-Glass into my computer with the single USB cable and I pressed go. And here we are. So it's- And what would be the demo? What would we show? Like are there some like some crowd pleasers or something? You have different kind of- Absolutely. Yeah, so what would you show? Let me do this. I'm gonna turn off my camera for half a second so that I can share my screen. So bear with me for a second. I'm gonna select screen sharing now. Okay. Oh, it looks like the video conferencing program is fighting for my camera. Let me turn that off. Okay, stop video. Bear with me. Okay, here we go. Now we're up and running. Let me share my screen now if that's okay with you. Okay. Do you see me? It says the- Oh, there. Yeah, I see your screen. It's a different- Sorry, is this one there? Yeah, I see you now. Yeah, you see me. Okay, good. Let me show you- First, let me show you what E-Glass looks like, right? All you've seen so far is the end effect. Let me show you the actual product. So I'm gonna use our chameleon media fusion technology and you're seeing our software right now and I'm gonna drop in an image of E-Glass. So here it is, you see this glass frame, right? And it's on these stands, so it's sitting on my desk and the magic happens with this camera. This camera right here, and I can even circle it for you, this camera is what is capturing the video right now. And then there's also lighting. You see that white bezel around the glass? That is actually the instructor light. So I can turn those off and disappear completely, but you can still see my writing pop up as I put it on the screen. And I can turn those lights back on and now I can actually turn the glass lights off so that all I have now is you and me. Let me put this away. And now I have your undivided attention. So I can turn those lights on and off. I can turn my lights off as well so that I can control basically what I want my students to focus on. And you just have one of these pop up background, kind of black backgrounds where you are, or? Yeah, yeah. I'm using it against a black wall right here. The room I'm in isn't necessarily dark. You can use this in bright rooms with busy backgrounds. In fact, gee, he's using it in his office right now and you can still see the ink pop. Let me show you one other thing though. Part of this chameleon media fusion engine allows me to drag in content. I can drag in PowerPoints. I can drag in images, content from web pages, documents, et cetera. So I'm gonna show you a little bit of that. First, I'm gonna minimize this. So you can see, here, let me drag in a PowerPoint. Okay, let me open this PowerPoint in Microsoft PowerPoint. Okay, you can see this, it has a white background and it has, excuse me, it has black text. It's a very busy PowerPoint, but we don't wanna show the background. We wanna optimize this PowerPoint to look best on eGlass. So I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna drag that PowerPoint into the software. And what you'll notice right off the bat is the background is gone. So our chameleon media fusion engine removed the background and it also changed the text color to white. So I can click through this slideshow and chameleon automatically optimizes the content so that it works best on the background that I'm using. So I can annotate on top of the content or I guess behind the content, but you see how it removes the background. So that's chameleon. It's a very powerful engine and it lets you basically bring any content that you have for your lesson plans, whether it be PowerPoints, documents, et cetera, right onto the screen like this document here. This is a homework document that I have. I'll show you what it actually looked like before I dragged it in. This is it, it has this purple background, white background, the text is all different colors, but when you drop it into here, right, it automatically optimizes the content to look the best on my E-Glass background. So this is making teachers' jobs easier as well. Nice. And potentially you could drive through the sound directly through that screen sharing. I'm not sure if you may be capturing the sound through your webcam or something at the same time right now because we are using this funny video chatting system, but is it optimized for Zoom or optimized for Microsoft Teams or Google Meet or something? Yes, absolutely. And you mentioned it does have a built-in microphone. Yes, Zoom works very well with E-Glass. In fact, if you look down here in the corner, you'll see this little Zoom button. We built Zoom into the software, so now you can run all your Zoom meetings right from the touch of a button. You don't even have to open up Zoom. So Zoom is- Did you hook into the API or something like that to do that or? Yes, we did. We've worked really closely with Zoom. We integrated their API into our software, but don't let that make you think that it's not compatible with other video conferencing platforms. In fact, I'm using it right now with your online platform. You can use it with pretty much anything that lets you connect a camera or share your screen. So both work really well. Speaking of screen sharing, I'm gonna turn this off and we're gonna come back to my webcam view here. Great. I think we'll accomplish a lot. We managed to beat David Copperfield, we can make him disappear, and we need to resolve the global warming problem. I think it looks fantastic. How about Matt? All these features, was this something you were working with before? Is all a bunch of brand new stuff that's been developed recently? Yeah, this is really brand new stuff, particularly the software engine that goes along with this is just head and shoulders above where we were before. And so Hovercam has taken us to a new stratosphere out there. It's just wonderful. Gee, he was saying you are on Mac, and Bailey you are on a PC. So you have Mac and PC full support? How about Chromebooks? Even Chromebooks, yes. The software does work on Chromebooks as well, yeah. That's awesome. I mean, it's gotta be really exciting for educators, right? How does it change your day-to-day lifestyle to have a technology like this when you teach? It's game-changing. I'm sitting in my advanced physics lab right now here at San Diego State, and I have one of these e-glasses sitting right over next to me, and I use it for many lectures with my students interacting with them over Zoom or whatever other channel we use. But more importantly, it allows you to make many lessons whenever you want. So oftentimes I'll think, oh, if there was a way to communicate this quickly to my students, I would do it. And now you just sit down at your desk for five minutes, you record a little lesson, you post it for them, and you're done. You don't have to program something, you don't have to create a PowerPoint discussion. You can just sit down and do it right in front of you. So it has unshackled us from the classroom. But like I said earlier, it also works fantastic in the classroom. And in fact, the students at San Diego State, when they came to my class and they saw me teaching the lecture on e-glass and piping it up to the big screen, I asked them, I said, what do you prefer? Do you prefer a PowerPoint lecture? Do you prefer a chalkboard lecture? A whiteboard lecture? Or do you prefer an e-glass lecture? And 87% of my students said they prefer e-glass and they didn't know why it wasn't in every classroom. We repeated that study at UCSD, very similar results. There it was, I think 85% said they prefer the e-glass approach. So it's just wonderful. Everybody here that has adopted it and around the world loves the technology and will not go back. So we're headed in a new direction. Because I guess, sorry, what did you say, sorry? Yeah, I can attest to what Matt said as a student too. That's how I found Matt. I was looking for physics lessons online to brush up on my knowledge in physics. And I took a two-hour lesson from Matt and I felt like that's the shortest lesson I've ever taken, it was like 15 minutes. And he's expression, he's body language, he's gazes make me feel like he was right there in my living room teaching and writing on my TV. So it's very engaging as I think that was the best lesson I've ever taken. I can imagine for educators it's very important to have the, like to be in the right mood and to not, if you have to fiddle around with all these presentation softwares and everything, if you can just get it recorded immediately, put it out there and the friction is the meme oil to get content done, it's a big deal too. And then it becomes more engaging for the students. And that's really part of the point is this is not hard to use, right? If you can grab a pen and you can write on a whiteboard, you can use e-glass, that's it. You can add all the other fun stuff like the PowerPoint insertion and other images if you want. But at the base level, it's grab a pen and start writing. That's it. Awesome, so and this, did you get the sound out there in a good way? And did you have the eye contact? The face, I mean, we already talked to spoke about all this. So are you gonna be selling this worldwide? Are you just focusing on the US right now or what's the plan? We will focus on the US this year and we will go global, but let's get it in the US first. All right, so there was an event like last week or something like that that there will be one more events in the near future? Yeah, our next events are to be determined, but for now we're looking at ISTI coming up. I can't remember the exact date, but I believe it's in the, oh, and we also have Infocom, which you might be familiar with, which is coming up in October. So be on a lookout for us at Infocom. We're really excited to show you what more we'll be developing with E-Glass as far as the software side. And maybe if we have some in-person shows coming up down the line, you might have a chance to check out E-Glass for yourself and get your hands on the units. So we're really hoping that we'll be able to start doing some in-person events because once you use E-Glass for yourself, you realize just how easy it is and how fun it is. I mean, it's so nice to have the camera, the lighting, the microphone, everything just set up and ready to use, just that detail is kind of important. And I'm wondering, Matt, do you feel like this is the time where there's very few teachers right now using this technology, but it could be thousands before the end of the year, or what do you think is gonna happen? There are probably already thousands of teachers out there using this technology. By the end of the year, it will be millions. Oh, wow, cool. All right, so this is gonna be big. And you're bringing it to the mass market, you're making everything smooth, everything is, and shipping, how soon? Can people buy it? We are shipping right now. The first batch is likely already sold out. Cool, all right, that's awesome. So thanks for showing you a cool technology and there's a lot of things to learn out there and people can enjoy learning in a more... And this is the perfect time to come out with this kind of technology, right? Everybody's, all these millions of students are at home and even when they go back to school and they need to get back to school, it's still gonna be hybrid. The future is gonna be hybrid, right? You need to have all the classes online. Everything needs to be there because and not every student is learning at the same speed. Maybe they wanna go back home and watch it again, stuff like that. This is a future proof product and if you do wanna learn more about it, I'd encourage you to visit us online. Go ahead and go to hovercam.com slash e-glass or learning.glass.com slash e-glass. Matt, is that the correct link? I hope it is. No.com on it, just take off the dot com. Learning.glass. Yeah, yeah, learning.glass slash e-glass. Thanks because this is just a dry erase marker. I can erase it really easy. That's an awesome top level domain. Really appreciate it. And we hope you guys have a great day. Thanks for checking out e-glass. Thanks a lot. Thanks everybody. Thanks for. Thank you, Nicholas. And thanks for watching.