 Hi, this is Allison Sheridan of the NoCillicast podcast, hosted at podfeat.com, a technology podcast with an ever-so-slight Apple bias. Today is Sunday, March 24th, 2024, and this is show number 985. Well, this week, Steve and I had great fun attending the CSUN Assistive Tech Conference in Anaheim, California. I've been going for well over a decade, originally introduced to it by the awesome Donald Burr. This conference is dedicated to technological advances in support of living a great life with visual, audio, mobility, and cognitive challenges. Conference is all week long, and while it includes sessions for concentrated learning, Steve and I only attend the exhibit hall, and we only go for one day. It's a bit of a whirlwind, but it's always worth it. We recorded 11 interviews from the show, which is a record for us. As you may have noticed, we're still pushing out the interviews from CES. So with this overlap, we've decided to interweave them so you'll hear both CES and CSUN interviews within the same episode over the coming weeks. I wanted to note just a couple of things from the conference and then let the interviews tell the story of what we learned. We recently played for you an interview with Amos Miller, co-founder and CEO of Glidance about the self-guided mobility aid designed for people with sight loss, and it's called Glide. You'll have either heard me on the podcast or watched me in the video using Glide to walk at a very brisk pace in a crowded hallway at CES with my eyes closed. I talked about how well it detected obstacles, such as posts and walls, and even other people, including Steve, purposely getting in my way. While the other people weren't purposely getting in my way, just Steve was doing that. Anyway, when I got near these obstacles, Glide gently started turning the wheels, which put pressure on my wrist, indicating a suggested maneuver to get around the obstacles. I was amazed at how well it worked, and it was one of the most interesting things we saw at CES. I bring all of this up because Amos and his team were at CSUN, and Steve and I made a point to go over and talk to Amos again. Turned out he was busy when we got there, so we started chatting with one of his assistants we'd met at CES. I'm disappointed to tell you what he told us. He explained that during CES, they weren't really quite ready for primetime with the sensors and electronic feedback in the programming to let people use the device for real. So when I was happily toodling up and down that hallway, thinking Glide was sensing objects and steering me around them, the gentleman we were talking to had been using a game controller to actually drive Glide. Now, it wasn't sensing obstacles, and it wasn't giving feedback from those sensors to tell me how to steer around them. The man with the remote control was doing all of that. I have to say I was quite deflated after learning this, and I felt not exactly lied to, but pretty seriously misled. I do understand this as a product that is not out yet, and so that's just fine, but I think they should have told me what exactly I was testing. So what I can say is that the feedback that the user will experience was real, what I was experiencing. So when the wheels turn, I could feel exactly what it was telling me to do, and it was very natural to follow Glide's lead, and that's very important part of it. So as an important part of the design, that is great, but I think they really should have told me it was being remotely driven, and I do wanna say the gentleman we were talking to realized that I didn't know that he'd been driving it, and he said the same thing that I should have been told, and I think it was just, they just forgot or something. I don't think they intentionally misled me in any way. And when we were at CSUN, we heard them, or the same gentleman was telling us that they had done a lot of work on the sensors and things were coming along. There was a new version of the hardware, and so I don't think there's anything nefarious about that, but I wanted you to know that what I experienced was not the real Glide yet. So anyway, I just felt like since I found out about it, you would wanna find out about it, and I don't wanna turn you against the company, but I don't want you to think that I had intentionally misled you. All right, let's cleanse our pallets from that disappointment with two fun things from CSUN. Guess who goes to CSUN every single year? Stevie Wonder. As you probably know, Mr. Wonder is blind, so this is a great conference for him to attend. We'd heard for several years that, oh, you just missed him, he was here yesterday, but this year he was there at the same time as we were. We really liked that he didn't get mobbed, but rather a small number of people gathered around him and just a few people asked to have their photos taken with him. We decided to respect him and let him be, but it didn't stop me from taking a photo to prove we were not making this story up. But better than seeing a celebrity was enjoying lunch with friends. Every year we end up with a different combo of old and new friends. This year it was our great pleasure to meet no-silicast contributors and hosts of their own podcast called Unmute Presents. That was Marty Sobo and Michael Babcock. We've known them through the show for ages and they've even had me on their show to talk accessibility, but there's nothing like meeting people in person. They were there with two friends of theirs. Patrick Burton was one of their friends and he has a product called BenVision. Ben stands for Binaural Experience Navigator and I don't entirely understand how this works, but it's a set of glasses with speakers piled into them that provides a sort of sonar experience, allowing the wearer to experience their surroundings through musical representation. It sounds crazy cool. Steve sat next to Patrick and he thinks I should get him on the show to interview him and I think it sounds cool too. The other person at lunch was Chris Cook. She's a blind tech nerd who worked for the Oregon Commission for the Blind and she tests out everything for the visually impaired and she is like, she's really nerdy about gadgets. She was absolutely delightful, definitely my people. She let me take a photo of her accessible watch, which was cool. You see the crystal over the watch face flips up and then you can feel the hands with your fingertips along with little bumps for each hour. She also modeled her EnVision glasses. These glasses are built on the Google Glass Enterprise Edition and it allows you to easily scan text and have text read out to you. But the thing that Chris really likes about EnVision is that you can get integration with a service called Ira. This service has real humans who watch for you through your glasses as you're walking around and they guide you. Imagine, say, trying to find your gate at an airport without being able to see, that'd be really hard. Now imagine someone else is seeing through Google Glass for you and able to tell you in voice how to navigate such a situation. It's like having a friend right there with you at all times. Michael and Marty chimed in that they also think Ira is an extraordinarily useful service for their own navigation even without the EnVision glasses. I definitely need to learn more about Ira. I hope to get Chris on the show sometime soon to do some gadget reviews for us. She does her own podcast but sadly I didn't write down the name so I can't tell you about it but when I found out what it is I'll be sure to let you know. As I said, CSUN was a whirlwind in all of the best ways. Stay tuned for some great interviews. Before we get into any assistive technology interviews though, let's learn about how you can be lazy while kayaking with pack motor from CES. Well last night we learned about a portable outboard motor that was an electric motor for boats or for using as a scooter. Now I'm in the pack motor booth. I'm with Michael and Matthew Becker who are gonna tell us about a dual thruster motor control system for kayaking. That's right. So we have a dual motor system for any kayak. One size fits all and it actually fit on a paddle board and canoe, anything like that. And if you wanted to put the paddle aside and just play around with the drone, there you go. So I'm gonna describe this visually too because there's an audio audience as well. So it looks like it kinda clamps around the kayak and then it has two bars that come down each with little thrusters on the ends of those. Yeah, that's correct. So we made it design wise, really easy to install. So within five minutes you can expand the pack motor, slide onto your kayak and be ready to go. So we want it to be where you don't have to use bolts or screws into your kayaks. You don't have to actually alter your kayak at all. You can just attach it and uninstall it without any damage. And pack motors joystick controlled. There's dual thrusters so you can turn on a dime. It's very fun to use. Yeah, I was playing around with the remote control. It's just a little joystick to just flip it around and it's a... Yeah, I gotta give it a try. Yeah, all right. Okay, let's see if I do it right. So if you can do just one motor at a time. Just one motor. Just slam it forward. Oh, so wait a minute. But everything I'm doing, they're all going. So hit it to the right. Okay. Now when we go forward, this won't go right first. Okay, I'm turning it. Okay, but how do I do... You said I could do one motor at a time. You gotta go at an angle for that one. Oh, that's the tricky one. Okay, I'm gonna try to turn. This is great for the... Oh, there we go, there we go. Oh, look at me go. You can actually feel the wind, it's like a fan one way. Yeah. All right, cool. So just when you drop this down on top of the... Are you sliding onto the kayak, you said? Yes. Yeah, you slide it on the back of the kayak, but if you have a situation where you want it in the front, you can also put it into the front as well. Okay, that's cool. So now it looks like this folds up pretty compact. Right, and that's how we got the name pack motor, actually, because you can pack it up and put it in a backpack and you can carry it on a plane or anywhere. It's okay to fly with. I lifted it up. It's not that heavy. What's it weight? What's it weight? 10 pounds. Under 10 pounds. I got more than that in my backpack today. That's right, yeah. Now, what about, how is this powered? It's powered with any 12 volt to 18 volt battery. And so we wanted to do that so that people could go to the store and buy their own battery and marine battery and hook it up with the lead, no problem. But we also sell lithium ion battery that's higher voltage. I give you a little bit more thrust. Okay, so that's a rechargeable battery. Rechargeable, correct. And now that's kind of in a black box. Where does that go? You just throw that over the side? Yeah, you can just throw it over the back of your kayak and you can strap it down. It's waterproof box. So if it falls in the water, it's totally okay. And it floats. The good thing is if you do throw it over the side, you'll be all right. Oh really? Hey, it's an anchor too. So does the box, this box I'm seeing that you've got the 12 volt battery and is that, does that come with the device or that's something you buy separately? You buy that separately. Yeah, that's good. It's optional. Like you said, you can just stop at Walmart and pick up a 12 volt battery. Could you put a 12 volt, just a regular Walmart 12 volt battery in that? Absolutely. Okay, that's cool. So it gives you a lot of flexibility. Well, this is really nifty. What's your delivery date on this? We're actually already in the manufacturing now and we have a batch being in transit to us now of 200 units. We've already sold 200 units before that one on Kickstarter. So we're 500 units in right now and we're getting more orders every day. So can people buy them today? Yeah, you can visit us right online, packmotor.com and place an order. And that's P-A-C-M-O-T-O-R. Okay, P-A-C-M-O-T-O-R. All right, well, thank you both gentlemen. This was a lot of fun. This looks cool. I like it. I'm lazy. I think I'd like to do this. Try it out. Thank you, Allison. Well, I wanted to clarify one thing about pack motor. At the very beginning, one of the gentlemen says, if you want to just kick back and drive a drone and there's not a drone really unless you consider the entire kayak to be a drone. So what he was trying to say was there's a remote control, hand controls that you use that you basically like driving a drone, except it's the entire kayak that you're driving. So I just don't want anybody to think there was actually a drone involved. That was kind of a confusing comment. I like to stop by the Goal Zero booth every year at CES because they do a lot of really interesting portable power options. And I mean, I mean, big power now. The first time I came to see them, it was a small little battery pack that had solar panels on it. And I still have that. And I haven't charged up. I've been waiting for that emergency use. But I'm with Chris Allen and he's gonna tell us about their newest products. What do you have going this year? Awesome. So, super excited. We launched our first one back in 2009. And so this is our sixth generation. This is our big beast. So this is the 4000, the Pro 4000. So this has more power out, more power in than we've ever had before in a nice compact package. This actually has a automatic power switching function. So if you're plugged in to our home circuit here with the Haven 10, and the power goes out. So here's the power. He's gonna flick a switch here. A lot of these people are listening on audio only, by the way. So he's flicking a power switch. And unfortunately, or fortunately, because you can't see, you're not gonna see a flicker, but the power is off. So the power transferred immediately from the grid, which were plugged in through the power here, the mirage, and now it's pulling directly from here. So in a power outage, there is less than 10 millisecond power down as it makes that switch. Very good. I like the no flicker. What we're looking at is a box that's not even a large cooler in size. And this was the 400, you said? 4000. 4000. So that's 4000 watt hours. And that's huge, actually, in terms of the power. It is awesome. And with another 4000 it has category leading. So our lithium iron phosphate batteries these are rated for 4,000 plus cycles. So that's well over 10 years of daily 100% cycling, zero to 100 back to zero. And we don't do zero to 100 most of the time, hopefully, right? Not very many people do. For the audience in terms of size, the Tesla power walls we have at our house are 13 and a half kilowatt hours. This is four kilowatt hours, which is huge, but this is a portable unit you can take anywhere. So on the bottom here, you can take this off or not. There's wheels, handle that comes out and you can wheel it around. And then you can take that off and you can actually attach it to external expansion tanks that are each 4000 watt hours. So you can get up to one of these, one of the big systems, and then four tanks, which will give you 20 kilowatt hours. Holy cow, that's a tailgate right there. That's a massive tailgate, right? Or all the tailgates, whatever you wanna call it. All right, so let's say we're not... You took this. Okay. Sorry, are you moving into here? That was transitioning. Yeah, we're transitioning at the same time. So this is the Yeti Power 4000. Yeti Power 4000. And how much Yeti Pro 4000? How much is this one? $4,000. $39.99. $4,000, $4,000. Yep. All right, but this would be different from, for example, having a generator at the house, right? Where you're burning gas or whatever, you'd use that. Correct, so you could power this with grid power when the power goes down. Of course, it automatically switches over. You can also hook it up to solar. We have new portable 400 watt panels. We also have a, we don't have it here, but we have a solar wall plate kit. So if you don't want to worry about dragging the cords through the house and everything, it actually goes into your external wall and then comes out right next, the electricity has to do it, but comes out right next to your Yeti Pro and now you just set out your panels outside, hook it to the wall and you've got anywhere from 400 to 30 or 3,000 watts of solar recharging this bad boy. All right, so I'm going to go get that GE Smoker. I'm going to plug it into the Gold Zero Yeti Pro 400 with solar panels and I'm going to eat off the sun. Yes, please. There we go. Okay, let's move on. All right, so these are the smaller brothers. We're going to switch around, we're going to switch sides here. So now we're getting into the little kids here, right? Yes, they are. So this is our new compact line. So we've had a 205. These are more toaster size. These are toaster size, exactly. So we have our Yeti 300, our 500 and our 700 and we took a lot of the great awesomeness of the big brother, the Pro 4000 and updated our compact line. So these have more power out than they've ever had before in the small size. We've added a new size, the 700 and then we replaced the 200 with a little bit bigger 300 watt hours. They has the same 4000 watt hour or 4000 battery cycles, which is awesome. The price is much less than 4,000. And then we also, this is half the time to charge as previous generations. So twice as fast, half as slow, whatever you want to call it. So these start out at 349, 499 and then the biggest, the Yeti 700 is 699. So it's 304, 500 and 700 for the 300, 500, 700, pretty close. Yep. All right, well that makes the pricing easy. That's good. We do. These come out actually at the end of this month. So January 30th, they'll be on sale on our website. You can find them at REI, other retailers. We're really excited about this line. What could you typically do with say the Yeti 700? I mean, obviously the 4000, we're doing some serious. Keeping our house running in the refrigerator. So these are more focused for, I'd say around the backyard and definitely for outdoors. So on the front, covering all the ports on the front as well as the back. We affectionately call it the mudflap because I don't know what else to call it. But this protects it from the elements. It's IPX4, but also UL2743 rated. Another awesome function is we still have all the protection here, but you can see it crystal clear through the display with the flaps down. And under our mudflap, we've got two AC ports and a couple USBAs. At the USB-C, we have a 30 and then we also have 100. 100 watt power delivery. Okay, all right, there's your MacBook Pro right there. And then you ask what we'd power. You can power, yes, absolutely a laptop with the phones and those small devices. You can also do like a Pella Grill. You could do a CPAP if you're camping or wherever it is. That's a nice idea. And then what we also love, this is a transition here, so we have our new Alta line of fridges. So these are portable fridges. You can see plugged in here through the six millimeter port on the front. It also has an adapter. I'm gonna add a little bit of info. He's pointing in the video. He's pointing to the Yeti 700. He's powering a refrigerator from it. Yep, portable refrigerator. Think a electric cooler. And it can either be powered through this six millimeter port or that there's an adapter for a cigarette. Okay. You can't be old enough to remember cigarette lighters in cars, but that's what we still call them, right? That's very kind of you, but yes, I do. So what's, we designed the Alta fridges. They don't have all the bells and whistles that you'll see other fridges have. We don't charge for that, but we also said we want a fridge that will last as long as possible outside. So if you compare it versus the market leaders, this fridge is 20 to 25% more efficient when you're using it with your Yeti. So what does that mean? Well, there's an equivalent size and equivalent battery competitor out there that claims 27 hours of time plugged into their battery. We get 37 hours with the same battery size, which is amazing. Very nice. Can we open it up and look inside? Absolutely. And please feel, we turned it on earlier. So it should be a nice chilly negative two if you touch the metal, you can feel that. Very nice. And that's being, so we're looking at a refrigerator at this cooler that's power, being powered by this Goal Zero Yeti 700 right now. There's nothing up his sleeves. That's all I see. I don't see any Kevlar cables. You're not making anything up on me, Chris. Nope, I'm not. So what's the name of this cooler? This is the Ulta 50. So this is 53 liter size, 77 cans basically. That's a lot of cans. And then we also have, it's bigger brother is a dual zone. So you can have set to fridge and freezer or two freezers or two fridges. Oh, come on. And that's 80 liters. So it's much bigger. And this would be 799 big brother's 999. And that's about a 20% discount to the leaders. That's really not bad. So if people want to find this, you saying they go to R.E.I. is a good place? R.E.I. go to our website, glosero.com. You go to amazon.com. Absolutely. Very good. Thank you very much, Chris. This is fantastic. It's very cool. Yes, one more, one more. That's not the show. That's ours. So this right here that you're seeing, this is a 12 foot tall extendable camping light. It's called, it's an area light. It's called the skylight. It's got a tripod at the bottom, a handle with the switch and it just slides up and down, collapses easy, puts out 6,000 lumens, which in the middle of the night, if you set up the, and the panels are all adjustable, the six light panels with all the LED lights on them. If you set it up with the panels up, it gets you 300 feet diameter of illumination. Okay. All the other campers hate you, but it's awesome for playing cards. We do not recommend that you do it in a close campsite, but you also have control of the direction of the panels and you can set it anywhere. Set the height and everything. Yep. You can set it from 250 lumens up to, I think you set it right. 12 feet. 12 feet. Wow. I am glad you pointed out. What is that called? The skylight. The skylight. Also powered from these. So that's our Yeti Ready Gear line. Okay. He's got a power cord coming out of the, the Yeti 500. That's great. That's great. Very cool. I'm glad you threw one more in. Yeah. This is the best, the best lit booth here for sure. Thank you so much for stopping by. Take care. Hey folks. I just submitted my taxes for the pod feet business to my accountant and it wasn't pretty. I know times have been tough for folks over the last few years especially. So quite a few folks have tailed off their donations through Patreon. It's also important to understand that Steve and I can afford to completely fund the show out of our own pockets. But it would really be preferable if it didn't cost us money to provide all this fantastic content for you. I'm afraid that in 2023, it cost us a lot of money to produce the shows. And I kind of wish it wouldn't. If you enjoy the work we do here and you'd like to help fund it, please consider going to podfeat.com slash Patreon and making a small monthly donation. I'd really appreciate it. Last November, Joe from the Northwoods joined me in a discussion of how she uses Apple's focus modes for emergencies. The conversation starts at around 15 minutes into NoCillicast 966. We set this up more as a problem to be solved conversation rather than a tutorial. She described how the elderly parents of a friend of hers were unable to contact her friend and they ended up calling Jill in the middle of the night in an emergency. I kept what Jill told us in the back of my mind but I never implemented any of her suggestions. A few months ago, we went to Disneyland and I purposely put my devices into Do Not Disturb using my Apple Watch. One of the nice things about having all your devices logged into the same Apple ID is that you can put one device into a focus mode and they all go into the same focus mode. I put my devices into Do Not Disturb because the last thing you want when you're enjoying the illusion of being in a real battle floating through Pirates of the Caribbean is to start having your phone and watch light up or worse yet, make noise. It takes you and everyone else on your little boat out of the experience. Steve also put his devices into Do Not Disturb. Unfortunately, this caused us to miss some very important notifications. The first notification was that our ring alarm system had been triggered. Then I missed a phone call from the human monitor from our ring alarm system. Then the human monitor tried to call me a second time and I missed it again. The final notification was the police ringing my doorbell since I'd never responded to the ring alarm people. Luckily, I did respond to this final one. Now instead of a quick tap to stop the alarm and then surreptitiously check the cameras in and around our house for intruders, we ended up talking in a voice call to the nice police officer. I'm sure at this point my voice and his were loud enough for not just my boat but all of the boats on Pirates to be disturbed. The solution Jill wrapped in a bow for us and I ignored was to tailor emergency bypass on our devices. The first part of this process was suggested by the ring representative and that was to put the phone number they call from into my address book so I'd recognize the number if they ever have to call again. It had never occurred to me that they were smart enough to make calls always come from the same number. And this is critical since I decline every single call I get unless I recognize the caller. Now emergency bypass from Apple is not findable inside settings using search which is how I tried to look for it. I didn't find it there because it's a feature you have to turn on contact by contact. My explanation will be how to enable emergency bypass using iOS. Let's use the ring monitoring number for as an example of how this works. Most of your emergency bypass contacts will already have names you'll recognize like mom or honey bunch. In the case of the ring phone number I created a card that had every scary thing I could think of in the name calling it ring alarm emergency monitoring. For each contact you're gonna wanna be able to have bypass do not disturb in an emergency select edit on their card. In edit mode you'll see ring tone. I'm sure that's the first place you're gonna think of to look for emergency bypass is gonna be under ring tone, right? Well, don't be worried if you have a cute ring tone like the opening refrain from the song who let the dogs out. We're not going to break that. Next to ring tone you'll see a chevron pointing to the right inviting you to see another screen. On this next screen the very first thing you'll see is a toggle for emergency bypass. If you toggle this on you'll notice that your adorable ring tone that makes you giggle every darn time is undisturbed as is the option for whether to use haptics and which version of haptics. After you toggle on emergency bypass for this contact tap done. You'll notice now that the contact card says ring tone emergency bypass on. If you have tailored your ring tone and or haptics it'll also say who let the dogs out and vibration heartbeat. While we can receive phone calls on our Macs at least via FaceTime, audio or video you not only can't set up emergency bypass on the Mac you can't even see definitively whether any given contact is allowed to bypass a focus mode in an emergency. If you open up a contact and try to edit the ring tone there isn't an option for emergency bypass. Worse yet if you do set it up via iOS and then look at the contact card in macOS contacts the ring tone will now say unknown tone but that's only if you hadn't set up a specific ring tone. If you have a specific ring tone then that's what it's gonna show so you have no way of verifying whether this contact has emergency bypass enabled or not. Thanks a lot Apple. All right I thought maybe I could create a focus mode including tailoring to those contacts with emergency bypass but focus modes disappointed me again. There's no option to select people by ring tone. It's probably makes sense because regardless of focus mode your phone's gonna go nuts when any of your emergency bypass enabled contacts try to reach you. And one thing I would do if I was starting from scratch is to put a little note into each contact that says emergency bypass as I enabled that feature for each contact. If you do this then you could make a smart list and contacts that specifically looks for notes containing the words emergency bypass. I'd use this if I ever wanted to find every contact designated for emergency bypass when maybe I needed to update the contacts I have. I also thought that this would allow me to select the entire list in focus modes but Apple and its infinite wisdom doesn't include smart lists in the selections inside focus modes. Thanks again Apple. As disappointed as I continue to be with focus modes there's one feature I do have turned on. In the default focus mode do not disturb which is the only one I end up using I've added Steve and my two kids Lindsay and Kyle. If you select the people option you can use the little plus button to choose from your contacts to allow notifications. There's also a dropdown to allow calls that's actual phone calls from everybody which would defeat the purpose of a focus mode allowed people only which is the people you added in the previous step favorites, contacts only or specific lists but of course not smart lists. But below that is another option that might be very useful. It's a toggle to allow repeated calls. This means that of a second call from the same person is received within three minutes you'll get a call regardless of whether they're in your list of allowed callers. I actually did have allow repeated calls enabled when the ring folks called me while I was on the pirates ride but in my haste not to be rude to the other people on the ride I declined the second call because I didn't recognize that number. Now I wanna give a shout out to Ring and my local police department for the speed at which all of this took place. From when the alarm first went off until the officer rang my doorbell it was only about 10 minutes. The other shout out to Ring is how inexpensive their alarm system is with this human monitoring. So the cost for their service is only $100 a year. Now depending on how many sensors and keypads you want the hardware costs from $200 to $329 which is also highly competitive. Now in our case adding the alarm system monitoring was even less expensive. When we bought our first ring doorbell we opted into their cloud video storage because it was only 30 bucks a year. When we added a ring floodlight cam to our backyard we paid another 30 bucks a year. I did hesitate on that one but I couldn't find the logic why the second cameras footage would be less valuable than the first one. Then we added a third ring camera system to the alleyway to get our that lets you get into our backyard and we forked over another $30 per year bringing our total to $90 per year. Now here's the deal you never pay ring more than $100 per year so adding human monitoring to our alarm system was only $10 per year more. I know Ring is owned by Amazon and that might give people pause but I have to say we're really happy with the service for our home. The bottom line is that we should all pay attention when Jill from the Northwoods is teaching us because she's usually if not always spot on with her advice. I'm glad I have my emergency bypass contact set up correctly now to make sure that if my alarm goes off I will take the call before unnecessarily having the police come out on a false alarm. Pretty sure they have better things to do. All right, enough teasing. Here's the first interview from CSUN. Well, my new friend Javier de Leon from Straptech has strapped something to my chest here that I'm gonna be testing out I guess. Tell us about Straptech. So Straptech, it's a startup in which we created a wearable device for the blind and visually impaired which is a chest harness that has an array of sensors up front that can detect in real time upcoming obstacles. To have the feedback, we can tell you what type of obstacle is in front of you and also we can tell you the position if it's at the height of your head it can be from your shoulders to your waist and from your waist to your feet. So you're still protected all around your body. So you would still use a cane but this would be in addition to that I would imagine? You can use it as a standalone device but if you prefer we have a feature which is a smart cane mode in which you can use a wide cane or maybe you can use a guide whichever you prefer. So we adapt to different lifestyles and not the other way around. Okay, all right. So this thing I'm wearing is a, I don't know what is that about four inches across and maybe three inches thick and he's got it strapped to my chest I notice the straps have something in them. Yeah, we have haptic actuators which vibrate in the straps and also in the back of the device. The best way to describe the shape and size is like a hamburger bun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's pretty rounded. It's kind of soft to the touch despite it being plastic but we want it to feel like a little bit more organic, right? Yeah, so it's not light but it's well balanced with the four straps. So I've got straps over my shoulders and around my waist and you said these come in different sizes for kids or adults, small, medium and large adults? Yeah, we have kids that have used a device that are like seven years old and we have also people that are 65 years old. We had more. As old as me? That's crazy. As young as you. There you go. Now we're talking. Yeah, and I mean, we don't have like a barrier on age because since it's haptic feedback it's pretty self-explanatory, right? When somebody touches your shoulder, you're not thinking about turning around, just turning around. So what we're trying to do is to develop that sense a little bit more to be really explanatory what's in front of you. Okay, are you gonna turn this thing on on me? For sure, I'm gonna turn it on really fast. He's pressing a button on the top. Oh, it just got tickled underneath my armpits here. Yeah, there you go. Woo, now the top ones are going. Right now, since the microphone is in front of you, it's detecting the microphone. Oh. So if you put your arms to the side. Okay, you're gonna, how about if you hold the mic? For sure. So you shouldn't feel anything right there. Are you feeling something? Still feeling it down in my armpits here. Oh, let me, I'm gonna readjust it a little bit. Are you feeling something? Nothing. It's because there's nothing in front of you. It's because there's nothing in front of you, but as soon as I step in front of you, you should feel vibrations. Yeah, I'm feeling them at the top and down below. Yeah, so since we're covering your whole body, you're feeling all around your body, but as soon as you turn around, you shouldn't feel anything. So that's how it works. Vibrations means there's something in front of you. What you should do is evade the obstacle by turning around until you feel nothing. Right, right. So is there a pattern going on here that should be recognized? So for example, right now, right around here, you should feel something at the shoulders or the top part of your chest, which means there's an obstacle and the top part. So Javi's got his arm up above, like at about eye level. That's when I felt it at the top. Yeah, so that means you can duck and go through there. Yeah, you can just limbo it. Yeah, also for example, if you feel it at the ribs, it means that it's something below you, from your waist then to your feet. And if you feel it all around your body, it means that it can be a person, it can be a pole, it can be a wall. Oh, it's very intuitive that way. I can see that. So what kind of sensors are built into this? We're using LiDAR and ultrasonic sensors to create redundancy and also to use the benefits of it, right? So LiDAR can be really good in where the light is pretty controlled and ultrasonic can be really good in open spaces. So we fuse those technologies together and we create these algorithms that work in conjunction to make a higher resolution and more redundant system. So I'm turning it off right now I think because I'm getting tickled the whole time he's talking. Every time he moves his arm, it's tickling me, but it made me think about battery life. How long does battery last? A whole day. We have also a smart feature that is smart on off. It's not turned on right now, so it's really easy to use it with different users. But what happens is that every time you stand in the same place for a while, it turns off. And as soon as you start walking again, it turns on again. Oh, that's genius. That's really good. So we have an algorithm. If you sit down, it works the same way. It turns off as soon as you stand up. Well, you don't have to turn it on off, keep forgetting to do it, yeah. So this is a prototype right now, did you say? No, no, no. We are already out in 17 countries. We have users all around the world and we're currently selling it on our website. Okay, and the website is? A Strap.Tech. Strap.Tech and how much money is it? It's $1,700. We have financial options too, so you can pay in six months, 12 months, and I think up to 36 months. Very good. Well, thank you very much, Avi. I wish you a best of luck with this. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time. Around 12 years ago, Steve surprised me with a very extravagant gift. He bought me a Hyal PR40 microphone. This mic is still one of the gold standards, running $350 to $400 to this day. I thought it was too expensive, but Steve has always been super supportive of the work I do for the podcast, and he bought it anyway. I consistently receive comments on how good my audio is, got one just last week, so I think it was a terrific upgrade. Eventually, I bought Steve a Hyal PR20, which has been great for him now that he produces the live show. The Hyal PR40 has an XLR connector on it. That's a round connector with three pins. The XLR cables are relatively thick and heavy. In order to use them to record on a computer, you must have some sort of interface. Many people use fancy big girl mixers, but you can also use an XLR to USB interface, like the Elgato Wave XLR that Marty Sobo told us about a few years back, and which I bought for me and Steve. Five years ago, as we started to do the podcast on the road, I wanted a microphone that could take a bit of a beating. I bought a pair of Shure SM58s for $100 each, which are also XLR mics. This was an easier way to go than disassembling our big girl mics from our boom arm vibration isolator setups when we were leaving home. On the road, we use our old Shure MVI XLR to USB mic interfaces that were replaced by the Wave XLR interfaces at home. This gives us a go bag of mics with all the accessories to make the show go. The quality of our audio is pretty good with the SM58s, but not as good as with our Hiles. In other words, there is no problem to be solved. Everything is working just great, but podcasters can't help but buy microphones. It's like a disease. When Dave Hamilton of the MacGygab posted online that a mic he really liked was on sale for a stupid low price, I simply had to investigate. As a podcaster and a musician, Dave is a hardcore audio guy, so if he says it's good, I really, I had no choice but to buy one. The mic he was talking about is the Tempest mic from 512 Audio. This mic lists for $169 on the 512 Audio website, but he found it on Amazon for $35. It's been a month or so since Dave first posted about this, and the Tempest is still on sale for $35 on Amazon. As I mentioned, both of our Hiles and our SM58s are XLR mics and required interface. The Tempest mic has a USB-C on it, not XLR, and even comes with a USB-C to USB-C cable. If this mic proves to be good enough to use as my road mic, that would mean I would have one fewer thing to carry because I wouldn't need an interface. In order to not talk about the Tempest, I have to introduce a set of terms that I always have trouble keeping straight in my head, condenser versus dynamic microphones. The Hyal PR40 and Sure SM58 are both dynamic mics, and the Tempest is the condenser mic. To explain the trade-offs between these two technologies, I'd like to quote an article from the Shure website. Condenser microphones usually are more sensitive and provide a higher output level. Condenser microphones usually are more sensitive and provide a higher output level. A higher output level can be useful because the signal doesn't need to be amplified as much by the mixer. Amplification adds hiss, and less expensive mixers generate more of it. Condenser mics have better response to high frequencies than dynamic mics. This gives condensers a crisp, detailed sound. However, it can be a problem for podcasters who record at home. When using a condenser mic, you risk picking up too much of the sh sound from air vents or extra noises from the lips and tongue. Dynamic mics naturally mask all of these irritants just like a soft focus filter on a camera hides blemishes. All right, that's the end of quoting Sure. So my dynamic mics, especially the Hyal PR40, have been masking irritants for you all these years, but maybe not giving you as crisp and detailed sound as a condenser mic like the Tempest mic might provide. I don't use a mixer, so we might get lucky and evade the problems of less expensive mixers mentioned in the article. I do use Audio Hijack as a virtual mixer so I can filter out some of the annoying sounds. Most of the time, I'm able to create a very quiet environment for recording the shows. At home and on the road, I tend to record in bedrooms with lots of nice sound-absorbing carpet embedding. In the summer, though, when we're at Lindsay's house, it can be well over 100 degrees outside, so we'll have to see how much the Tempest mic might pick up from the air conditioning. Maybe we'll just freeze out the whole family until showtime and then shut it off during the duration of the show. The Tempest, again, for only $35, comes with a mic stand and two different connection options. One is a simple ring that hard mounts the mic to the stand. This can be problematic as any vibration on the desk will be translated directly into the mic. For example, if I'm recording in someone else's show, I often interact with a chat room while someone else is talking. My typing could come through on the mic, which is very distracting. The second mount for the tripod, again, for only $35, includes a vibration isolator. Seriously, a vibration isolator is included for $35. Anyway, a vibration isolator is a series of rubber bands that allow the mic to kind of float and keep surface vibration from transmitting into the mic. Unlike my other mics, you don't talk into the end of the Tempest, you talk into the side of it. I'm embarrassed to admit how I figured this out. I was playing around trying to figure out how to get the mic to be stable on the tiny included tripod. I had it on the desk in front of my monitor with the bright display shining through the microphone and I could see a sort of lollipop shape in silhouette inside. When I plugged in the mic, it glowed blue. Well, the lollipop shape I saw is the 34 millimeter gold-plated condenser capsule for this large diaphragm mic. Now that I had the mic oriented correctly, standing straight up in front of me, I could also use the controls on the front of the mic. There's a mute button, a mic gain dial, a headphone jack and a dial to control the headphone volume. Having a headphone jack right on the mic is fantastic. I'll be able to monitor my own voice while recording and use the mic gain knob to ensure that I'm not clipping, which is so very harsh to the ear. I'll even be able to tell if those mouth noises that are easy to pick up on a condenser mic are happening and be able to correct for it real time. One more thing about the mic and the stand. In order for the mic to stand vertically in the vibration isolator, the mic is way off center. And by way off, I mean a full four inches off. The center of gravity is way out of balance. If I rotate the three legs of the tripod so one leg is aligned with the mic, it's reasonably stable, but it does make me nervous. I left it out of my desk the other day in that setup and I heard a loud crash when my cat Grace walked right by it and knocked it over. So that does make me nervous. Okay, all this talk about a mic without letting you hear it is just plain mean. We'll see whether I got what I paid for for $35 or whether I got a steal on this mic. I'm gonna do some comparisons of the Hi-O PR40, the Shure SM58 and the Tempest. I'll introduce each mic and then say the opening tagline for the show. I want you to be able to hear the Tempest compared to both mics. So I'm gonna do the Hi-O, then the Tempest, then the SM58, but then I'll do the Tempest again so you hear it right on either side there. I normally use Audio Hijack to sweep my voice using a high-pass filter, a 10 band equalizer to set to base boost and a dynamics processor that eliminates clipping. But for these tests, I'm gonna do all of them without Audio Hijack. So this will be the raw input. This is the Hi-O PR40 raw input without Audio Hijack. Hi, this is Allison Sheridan of the NoCellicast podcast hosted at podfeed.com. This is the Tempest raw input without Audio Hijack. Hi, this is Allison Sheridan of the NoCellicast podcast hosted at podfeed.com. This is the Shure SM58 raw input without Audio Hijack. Hi, this is Allison Sheridan of the NoCellicast podcast hosted at podfeed.com. This is the Tempest Raw Input Without Audio Hijack. Hi, this is Alison Sheridan of the NoCillicast podcast, hosted at podfeed.com. I'll stay on the Tempest mic here for a bit. I'm curious what you think of the three microphones in comparison to each other. My guess is that different people will like different mic sounds. The good news is that I think all three mics sound pretty good, and the $38 Tempest definitely holds its own. I mentioned that the Tempest has a physical mute switch, but in order to press it, I have to grab the entire mic and squeeze. I'll engage it right now, so you could really hear me having to grab the microphone and click that button. It's pretty harsh. Now at home I use a light tap on top of the WaveXLR interface from Elgato, which mutes my microphone, but when I'm on the road, if I keep using this mic, I'll probably use a software mute inside sound source from Rogue Amoeba. Well, I'm back on my high-OPR 40, and let's now talk about some more practical things about using this mic on the road. The mic stand for the Tempest is so tiny that I had to put it on top of a box to get it up high enough to get it close to my mouth. I've mentioned before that monitors are always too tall for me, so if the mic stand is too short for me, it would be unusable without something to set it on for everyone else. When I'm on the road, DeskBase is at a premium, and I already have a great deal of difficulty wrapping my arms around my mic to get to the keyboard when I'm recording. The odd off-balance design would probably make using the vibration isolation mount impossible to use, so I'll have to take my chances with the hard mount, which is a little bit less ungainly. As I was thinking about how annoying it is that the mic stand is so short and yet takes up so much space, I started wondering if I could use the Tempest with one of my other road tripods. I recently changed from a very tall mic stand that took up too much room to a slightly shorter one that takes up far less DeskBase. With a lot of fussing around with adapters for the different thread sizes, I was able to get the hard mount for the Tempest to work with my medium-sized, small footprint tripod. Not only is the height perfect for me, but without the vibration isolator, it's also quite stable. One thing I might want to look into is some kind of pop filter for the Tempest. For the recordings you heard, the mic was quite far away from my mouth or else my peas were popping like crazy. It's a good thing I was monitoring my own voice with the headphone jack on the Tempest or I wouldn't have realized I was popping those peas. When I was down at Lindsay's house this last weekend, she was cleaning out a lot of stuff from her garage and her basement, and she was throwing away some old costumes, and I happened to find a little fuzzy thing that was supposed to be like a bear's foot that the little kids would put over their wrist, and I think it might make the perfect little muff for the end of my Tempest mic. We'll see how that works. The bottom line is that the $169 Tempest mic is a very good competitor to my other mics, and for the current price of only $35 on Amazon, it is an absolute steal. If you're looking for a good mic with USB-C and no need for an interface, and you can control your environment to eliminate unwanted noise, the large diaphragm Tempest condenser mic from 512 Audio might be perfect for you. Well, that's gonna wind us up for this week. Did you know you can email me at allicentapodfeed.com anytime you like? If you have a question or suggestion, just send it on over. Remember, everything good starts with podfeed.com. You can follow me on mastodon at podfeed.com slash mastodon. If you wanna listen to the podcast on YouTube, you can go to podfeed.com slash YouTube and find all of Steve's amazing videos of the CSUN and CES interviews there too. If you wanna join the conversation, you can join our Slack community at podfeed.com slash slack where you can talk to me and all of the other lovely new silicastaways. You can support the show at podfeed.com slash Patreon and I really hope you go do that or with a one-time donation at podfeed.com slash PayPal. And if you wanna join the fun of the live show, head on over to podfeed.com slash live on Sunday nights at 5 p.m. Pacific time and join the friendly and enthusiastic new silicastaways. Thanks for listening and stay subscribed.