Yesterday, while playing around with my tobii I discovered something interesting. I am used to certain settings on the P10, to settings which are tried and proved to be the best for me. For a reason though, my eyes worked brilliantly, and responded much faster than usual. Due to this fact, I struggled to control my tobii, had problems hitting certain areas with my eyes, etc. Recalibration didn`t help, even tried to change the calibration area without any success. Then, thought about altering some of the settings in the Advanced Settings Menu of the Tobii software. Decided to work in Mouse Control, just to get my eyes warmed up for the rest of the work on the P10.
Sadly, controlling the mouse cursor proved to be a hard task, too. Therefore, because of the highly responsive eye action, I decided to go into extremes with my tobii`s mouse control settings. Kept fixation sensitivity at low level, dwell time my default (843ms) and changed the mouse cursor speed to very fast from normal. Voila, everything is great, I can`t remember ever being able to use mouse control this well. In fact, I was so enthusiastic about this success, that I decided to stick with mouse control for the rest of the evening. Imagine, that I could even bring up the tiniest icons, from the bottom right of the screen. For instance, connect and disconnect to my wireless network on my own; I could restart my XP as fast as a mouse user can. Doesn`t this sound just fantastic? :)

You, reader, might think that there is a conflict in this blog. When I say, the responsiveness of my eyes caused the problem I mean that they simply weren`t suitable for my default settings on the P10. Or even the other way around. I just think, that if the tobii software could detect how the users` eyes work and automatically adjust itself to changing capabilities – not by manual alteration of settings and recalibration – would save a few worries for users and their helpers as well. Not to mention, what if one can only have access to a P10 at school, where staff might not be best trained. If this idea could be implemented in the tobii software would make life so much easier. Tobii P10 users, in general, probably already find it quite difficult to express exactly what their problems are. What if the device which should be used to help in this, cannot function as it should and there is either no help, or the problem is lost somewhere in between the way from the user to the helper; therefore, can`t be solved?

So, I say to automatically adapt the tobii`s settings to certain changing needs should be a way for development to pay attention to. Just imagine, if your tobii could adjust itself for more responsive eyes to use faster dwell times, mouse movements and in turn for a less responsive user could do the opposite. Wouldn`t you just love it?

Chris
Pro tobii user