Vision

An APP that turns Hearing Somewhat, Into Seeing With Color

For those who are visually/audibly impaired, usually with Synesthesia:

Currently called:

I HearEye

An app for an IPhone or other smart cell phone device, that listens and turns full spectrum sound into full spectrum images and color.   Since the birth of computers playing music programs like ITunes or other music playback programs, have had a button to engage an image generator to turn sound into images.  This is not IHearEye.

IHearEye is an amassed set of parameters collected and built into the smartphone as part of an APP that plays color or adds colors to images, reproducing what a person with Synesthesia would see.   

This app has two modes:   

Mode #1 – Music directly or sound from the smartphone’s internal microphone is turned into a display full of colors.  It does this conversion directly translating time, energy, and frequency information into visual material.  It does this so accurately that a singer could adjust their pitch by watching the colors.  It has parameters that allow it to be manipulated according to the person with Synesthesia own sense of color.  Once the parameters are set the colors will remain the same, unless changed.  There are no random image generators attached to or within this device.

Mode # 2- The camera on the away side of the screen is turned on and a person without Synesthesia would see the world the same way a person with Synesthesia does in real life.  On the screen another person without Synesthesia would see what you with Synesthesia are seeing.

IHeareye

Bernard Fox July 2016

An APP that turns A Jumble of Different Sounds and allows you to hear them One at a Time. 

For those who are audibly impaired:

Currently called:

I AudioLens 

The I Audio Lens is an aid to hearing but not a hearing aid.  It makes things much easier to hear and understand.  It does this by amplifying only one sound at a time.  

Know anyone with a hearing aid?  They are always saying their aid doesn’t work very well.  In an average home environment they comment “I can’t understand you.  I hear too many sounds going on and its all a jumble to me!”  This is what a regular hearing aid does.  It takes all the sounds squashes them into a very small dynamic range then equalizes and amplifies all those sound together.  Current hearing aids treat all sound as one entity.  But when your hearing diminishes, so does your ability to separate/discern between sounds at the same time.  Instead of blocking out the air conditioner sound or TV sound, from the sound of the person that is talking your hearing aid expects you to do that part, to do the separating IN YOU HEAD with your brain.  But your brain can no longer separate them.  Your brain has lost the ability to separate and discern when it lost the hearing.  So all you hear is a jumble of sound.  Know anyone who constantly takes their hearing aid out? 

The I AudioLens separates sound for the wearer.  The TV is playing, you only hear the TV.  You don’t hear the air conditioner or the sound coming through the window or the noise in the other room.  When your phone rings, the system switches over and you only hear the phone ringing. But between each ring you hear the TV again.  And there is a knock at your door.  Now you hear the knock at the door, all alone, and then back to the tv.  You heard the knock clearly because it was the only thing being amplified at that moment.  Your heard the TV clearly because it’s the only thing being amplified at that moment.  You heard the phone ring because it is the only thing being amplified at that moment.  I AudioLens separates sound and amplifies them only one sound at a time.  SO when your daughter walks into the room and just starts talking the tv is no longer heard and you only hear your daughter. 

SO wait, how does it know which sound is most important?  As it turns out there is a priority to sounds.   What do I mean?  I mean the smoke detector is a more important sound than the telephone, and the telephone ringing is more important than the tv, and the person walking into the room is more important than most things but not as important than the smoke detector.  There is a priority to sounds.  The I AudioLens knows this, and always selects the most important sounds in order of importance.  And anyway it is easy to change the order of importance in the software.  I call the order the prioritizing order of the sounds.

I built this device in 1992.  It works perfectly.  I built it in analogue.  Then I redesigned it to be ridiculously smaller in digital.  I have recording of this device working.  (available) I have tried it on Hard of hearing people, it works better than any existing hearing aid because after amplifying one sound at a time it is precisely tuned to the exact hearing loss of the individual.  It does not have two or four bands of audio like most expensive hearing aids.  I AudioLens has a minimum of 15 audio bands.  

I hand built two for a person who was told they would never hear again.  They came to NYC from Seattle Wash and we spent 3 whole days tuning it up for her.  I had to develop new methods for calibrating hearing loss compensation.  Existing methods used by everyone else\’s are not accurate enough.  As she left NYC I drove her back to the NYC airport in a noisy windows-open car in traffic.  I held a record album between us so she could not see my mouth.  Yet she heard perfectly.  When she got back to Seattle her mother called me, all they could do was cry on the phone.

I originally called the device the Prioritizing Hearing Aid.  But in the USA anything called a hearing aid has to be researched for two years by the FDA.  In those two years all the hearing aid companies try and steal what is new and how it works.  I know this to be true because one hearing aid company I brought it to was only interested in buying and keeping it from everyone else.  They are not concerned about people hearing.  They are concerned to keep their multi-billion dollar industry very quiet.  10%-20% of the US population needs or will need a hearing aid.  Worldwide the number is more gigantic.  With the average good hearing aid costing around $1500 dollars each, and most people need two of them.  The US market alone is very big.

Originally the device was to be used only in the home.  It is now modified to work everywhere and have many additional features.  Now called IAudioLens, up until recently it was called the Multi-Prioritizing Hearing Device.  It now has many additional features like Room Synthesis.  With the device a musician can practice his clarinet at home but hear Carnegie Hall.  And real-time translation to another language, is close on the horizon.  The person in front of you speaks in French and you hear them in English.  This just isn’t perfect yet.

The I AudioLens takes multiple sound in and only amplifies them to your precise hearing loss, one at a time.  Nothing is yet better.  Sound sample available.  This device has many expansion possibilities.  It is the first IOT hearing device.  I also needs a collection of small stand alone hardware.         Bernard Fox 2016