BlindSquare vs Belt Control

BlindSquare is pioneering accessible navigation both indoors and outdoors. Know where you are, know where you're going, travel with confidence. BlindSquare is a new solution that combines the latest technology to help the blind with their daily lives. It has been developed in collaboration with blind people and carefully field tested. You need either an iPhone or an iPad to get started. It also supports some additional accessories to enhance the experience. How does it work? BlindSquare uses GPS and the compass to locate you. It then gathers information about the surrounding environment from FourSquare. BlindSquare has some unique algorithms to decide what information is the most relevant and then speaks it to you with high quality speech synthesis. “What's the most popular café within 200 meters radius? Where is the post office or the library?” You can control BlindSquare also through voice commands. The Voice Command feature is a premium service requiring purchase of credits for continuous use. Voice Command Credits are available as an in-app purchase on the App Store. Using BlindSquare as a GPS solution: When you start the app, it will start telling you the interesting places and street crossings around you. By changing the radius, you can limit the area you are interested in. You can also search by search term or by category. You can select an interesting place from the search results and perform the following tasks: 1) Get contact info (address, phone number) 2) Open twitter feed or restaurant menu (if provided) 3) Make a phone call 4) Start tracking the place (BlindSquare will assist you by repeating the distance and the clock face direction) 5) Start your favourite navigator for turn-by-turn instructions (TomTom, Navigon or Apple Maps) BlindSquare is aware of when you travel by car, bus or train and starts to report interesting places in front of you (for example, the next stops) and street crossings when you are passing them. You can also save your own private places to iCloud so they will be found with your every device. Using BlindSquare as a Foursquare client: If you like to play Foursquare, you can do the following with BlindSquare: 1) Get a list of nearby FourSquare venues 2) When you are in a place, you can check in by shaking your device 3) Do a check in with commenting and twitter/facebook sharing 4) Correct the location of the place BlindSquare supports the following languages: English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean (South Korea), Norwegian, Polish, Portugues, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish. VoiceOver usage is supported but it also includes higher quality additional speech synthesis by Acapela Text-To-Speech from Acapela Group. Instructions in English: https://www.blindsquare.com/user-guide/ and https://www.blindsquare.com/faq/ Please note: This app retrieves data in real time from Foursquare and Open Street Map. Use of a flat rate data plan is highly recommended. Continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life. Having only been released in May 2012, BlindSquare has already received several prizes and awards: - GSMA: Global Mobile Awards 2013, Best Mobile Health Product or Service - Apps4Finland 2012 - OpenCities App Challenge 2012 - The Finnish Information Processing Association: Best Product 2012 Please note: To use BlindSquare, your iCloud account has to be active so BlindSquare can access it to save your settings and places. Continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life.

With this app you can control the feelSpace naviBelt with your smartphone. It is primarily aimed for rehabilitation teachers for orientation and mobility who would like to use the naviBelt in lessons with blind and visually impaired people. This app can also be used for the feelSpace naviGame. You can control the vibration with three different modes: "Parcours", "Compass" and "Position". These modes are explained further below. When you use the app for the first time, you need to connect the naviBelt to your smartphone once. Start the pairing mode of your naviBelt by pressing and holding the "favorite" button for 5 seconds. Now select the desired mode in the app from the table bar. Then press the "Play" button in the middle of the screen to start the vibration. Parcours mode: In this mode, you can change the reference system for the directional display by the naviBelt. Instead of an alignment by cardinal directions, you can use the alignment of a room or a parcours. You can specify which side of a room or parcours you want to refer to as the "front direction". This allows you to adjust the signaling through the belt so that the belt vibrates to this front direction instead of north. The belt wearer first aligns himself so that the desired new front direction is directly in front of him. If the vibration is not already felt in the middle of the belly, you have to adjust the front direction in the app. To do this, first move the direction arrow on your screen upwards. To change the front direction, activate the button "Change front direction" and adjust the orientation of the highlighted compass rose by moving your finger on the screen until the vibration is at the belly button. To confirm the selection of the current front direction, deactivate "Change front direction". Compass Mode: In the "Compass" mode, you can define in which direction the naviBelt should vibrate. If the compass needle on the screen points to the east, the vibration of the belt now also points to the east instead of north. Position mode: In the "Position" mode, each of the 16 vibration units of the feelSpace naviBelt can be selectively activated. For example, if the direction arrow on the screen points upwards to number 1, the vibration is permanently located at the front of the belly, no matter how the belt wearer turns. In position mode, you can also change the front direction. This is recommended if the naviBelt is worn around the waist in a different position than recommended, because in this case there is a different vibration element at the front of the belly than the usual one. To adjust the front direction, first set the direction arrow pointing upwards on the vibration element 1. Then activate the "Change front direction" button and swipe your finger over the image to change the orientation of the marked circle. If it now vibrates at the belly button, the new front direction is set, and you can deactivate "Change front direction".