Forum
P10
to be in a physical condition that makes buying and using an eyegaze computer both necessary and reasonable is to live a life in hell. i think we can all admit that. i, for one, have ALS. there are those of you out there with spinal-cord injuries and other catastrophic circumstances. i think of all of you and pray for all of you all of the time. for hardware and software engineers to create such incredible and enabling machines is testament to how deep human empathy for one another can flow. i would like to personally thank every single person who ever contributed to the design and production of this computer.
however, as wonderful as the software and the built-in cameras are, i feel that i must comment on the choice of the standard computing platform that the P10 is built upon. Intel celeron processors have always been "entry-level" products. even Intel themselves admit that every generation of celerons have been designed and marketed with that idea in mind. at a cost of over $17,000.00 USD, there should be absolutely NOTHING "entry-level" about the P10! software upgrades in the future may well be impossible. what then? that brings me to the real problem i am faced with. i don't know about any of you, but my P10 has an integrated mono sound-producing chipset instead of an actual sound card. it is barely capable of delivering the synthesized "voice" that we've all come to rely upon, let alone delivering the music that i know helps every single one of us deal with our lives from one day to the next. sure, this
is a "speech generating device", and we all know what that means, but c'mon guys (at tobii & the us govt), do we not deserve a simple, fully-functioning stereo sound card??; one that we can plug our external
speakers into?? is that too much to expect?? the difference in cost would be about $40.00 USD. it is an obvious and foregone conclusion that the P10 is designed to replace completely any computer that a patient currently uses and even the most basic of those systems (you know - the ones with the celeron processors) came with real sound cards. i wanted the D10 model but was told that it had been discontinued. so much for thinking i had all the necessary information.
to be in a physical condition that makes buying and using an eyegaze computer both necessary and reasonable is to live a life in hell. i think we can all admit that. i, for one, have ALS. there are those of you out there with spinal-cord injuries and other catastrophic circumstances. i think of all of you and pray for all of you all of the time. for hardware and software engineers to create such incredible and enabling machines is testament to how deep human empathy for one another can flow. i would like to personally thank every single person who ever contributed to the design and production of this computer.
however, as wonderful as the software and the built-in cameras are, i feel that i must comment on the choice of the standard computing platform that the P10 is built upon. Intel celeron processors have always been "entry-level" products. even Intel themselves admit that every generation of celerons have been designed and marketed with that idea in mind. at a cost of over $17,000.00 USD, there should be absolutely NOTHING "entry-level" about the P10! software upgrades in the future may well be impossible. what then? that brings me to the real problem i am faced with. i don't know about any of you, but my P10 has an integrated mono sound-producing chipset instead of an actual sound card. it is barely capable of delivering the synthesized "voice" that we've all come to rely upon, let alone delivering the music that i know helps every single one of us deal with our lives from one day to the next. sure, this
is a "speech generating device", and we all know what that means, but c'mon guys (at tobii & the us govt), do we not deserve a simple, fully-functioning stereo sound card??; one that we can plug our external
speakers into?? is that too much to expect?? the difference in cost would be about $40.00 USD. it is an obvious and foregone conclusion that the P10 is designed to replace completely any computer that a patient currently uses and even the most basic of those systems (you know - the ones with the celeron processors) came with real sound cards. i wanted the D10 model but was told that it had been discontinued. so much for thinking i had all the necessary information.
I agree here, this thing should have a freaking quad core inside of it for how much money is in it. and it should have a top of the line sound card, maybe 512 MB video card.
i mean hell. if you can put a core 2 duo in a laptop then why not a core 2 duo in a tobii?
and if they can put stereo sound in an iPod why not a tobii?
it smells of fish and not good salmon.
I agree with you guys as well, this system should have a larger HD, more memory, faster processor and a video card, I mean for the price it sells as the cosumer we should get what we are paying for. I love this device for its accuracy in the eye gaze system but it lacks on the other areas as you mentioned. As for the audio, I bought a usb to audio jack adapter which works ok...
Dear Robert and others,
I can fully understand the frustration created by the fact that a system like the P10 does not compete well with standard mainstream hardware. As you have pointed out, no user of a communication aid makes the pick based on availability of fancy gadgets, but is forced to rely on a system by inalterable fate.
Yet I'd like to explain something about pricing and development decisions, as well as draw comparisons to the standard computing world.
First of all it is important to understand that the price of a device like the P10 is not so much determined by the costs of the single components, but by the development effort. Creating a precise eyecontrolled communication aid like the P10 requires a great amount of engineering. Developers calculate several man-years before a first device can even be testrun. In our field it is also required that our devices are extra-super reliable, because all of the user's communication relies on it, that creates an extra need for development and testing efforts.
At the same time we are producing numbers of these devices that mainstream computer companies would laugh about. Even though the P10 is in the field of communication aids a fairly successful model, our total production output is probably close to what HP or Dell would perceive as first pre-production Betatest series when they launch a new laptop. The development costs for items in the regular computing world are apportioned among hundredthousands of units, so they don't matter that much any more. In our world of highly specified appliances this is very different.
The same background gives reason for choices of used components and using allegedly outdated platforms. The standard computing world has insanely short lifecycles for their products. We need to have much longer lifecycles in order to bring in our development costs on the one hand, and for funding reasons on the other (once a user has been given a system by funding authorities, in most regions of the world there will be no openings for a new model within the next five years or more - that means that we have to ensure availability of repair services and spare parts way longer than usual in the computing world). So the decisions for used platforms take in the expected availability much more than the component costs. The Celeron platform has been judged entry-level in personal computing, but in industry computing (controlling machines etc.) it is one of the few well established standards that will be around for a long time (as developers for highly specialized industry solutions have similar needs as we have).
Fortunately there is a solution to that dilemma, so that our users can still benefit from the fast pace in the world of mainstream computing and entertainment systems, as well as from the persistence and thoroughness in our eycontrol solution. You can use your P10 to remote control any standard PC via a standard IP network. That means that the P10 mirrors the screen content of the standard computer and all mouse or onscreen-keyboard commands executed on the P10 are forwarded to the other system. The other system could have any harddrive size, processing power or high-performance video and audio cards, and could be running even extremely resource demanding standard software without any interference with the eyetracking performance.
This scenario is actually pretty easy to set up, you just need to know the other computer's IP address and configure Windows Remote Desktop Connection on both systems.
You can find a description of it here:
http://www.tobii.com/assistive_technology/support_downloads/downloads.as...
(a pdf called Remote control with MyTobii P10).
I hope this will help to gather back a bit of the quality of life you lost.
All the best,
Uli
Dipl. Päd. Uli Ehlert, Tobii Technology GmbH
This solution, using the windows remote desktop connection, has several limitations. Ex. watching films or gaming (which was the topic of several talks at the last Cogain conferanse).
In my opinion a better answer for this question would be if Tobii told that they would supply a "downgrade-kit", which converted the P10 in to a plain monitor with built-in gaze-equipment, similar to the D10. As far as i know this might be possible, as the gazeunit is communicating with a firewire, and I guess the monitor is connected with a VGA-like interface to the motherboard? This solution would absolutly turn the P10 in to something else than a portable and kind-of-reliable AAC-unit, but I'm positive that this is a need of many users. And a growing need in the future - as you point out - this is a long-life equipment.
Åge Tornes