Solution for a handicapped person

[Le Concombre Masqué]

Isabelle is plagued by multiple sclerosis ; i.e. I witnessed her failing to type her credit card’s PIN, though she knows it by heart, because of combined vision and motility coordination issues.

 

I guess the solution should involve streaming + vocal command ; on this forum I mainly discussed the charms of rebooting a Mac on Windows (minimum) Server in order to get the best from HQP : I’m not the most savvy when it comes to convenience and hope you will help me help Isabelle building a system.

 

She owns obsolete Android tablet and Windows PC but could afford an iPad or new PC or Mac. She lives alone in an apartment and can’t obviously fight the neighbors ; thus the front part might be decent but in a consistent price range with the fact that speakers and amp won’t have to be able to reproduce forte at 92 dB nor choruses at 94.

 

She lives in France so I’m thinking of Qobuz for the streaming part (she should be able to go from Gould playing Goldberg to Massive Attack or Miles Davis) but maybe there’s a more integrated solution

 

Thank you

[Ralf11]

Siri isn't there yet but Google might do it based on voice

 

could she use a joystick and screen?

[Le Concombre Masqué]

I think so, yes

[mansr]

Amazon's Alexa might also be an option.

[psjug]

4 hours ago, mansr said:

Amazon's Alexa might also be an option.

Seems like the way to go for voice control.  Alexa works with Sonos too so it would be easy to set up a nice system.  Unfortunately this is not showing availability in France yet (But she can also control Sonos by typing/gesturing on the Android tablet):

 

https://sonos.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4158/?_ga=2.243371532.806895612.1523413691-1968010413.1523413691

[PeterSt]

24 minutes ago, psjug said:

Seems like the way to go for voice control.

 

I would not count on that. Speaking is, or will be difficult sooner or later. Otoh I can't tell whether voice control will be able to sustain recognition or not.

[PeterSt]

For MS and these kind of applications (be it audio or TV) there is one major matter only : simplicity. And reachability (think wheelchair).

So I personally don't see much in the OP which suits that. Sorry ... (see the pin code situation)

 

I am speaking of experience with an exact same situation (MS and audiophile).

 

Depending on the stage the MS is in, you may find yourself in the impossible situation that you won't be able to explain the working. Or things you may not think about : that no touch screen is going to work out (aiming won't work). Keyboard similar but different.

 

See the word in bold, above, and always keep that on top or else all will fail.

[psjug]

9 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

I would not count on that. Speaking is, or will be difficult sooner or later. Otoh I can't tell whether voice control will be able to sustain recognition or not.

You misunderstood me (careless writing on my part).  I meant to say that if you want to use voice control for audio, then Alexa would be the way to go.  Probably it would be good to have both voice and tablet options for controlling the audio.

[PeterSt]

1 minute ago, psjug said:

You misunderstood me (careless writing on my part).

 

I don't think so ? but maybe I just don't understand.

What I tried to say is that depending on the mood (can change on a daily basis) and stage the MS is in, you will have a hard time understanding what the person is trying to tell you (having 3 bottles of wine on two hours of time may resemble it).

 

So what I don't know is how voice control which has to deal with recognition of words as such, is able to keep on recognizing what the commands are. Maybe it is way better than I imagine - I just don't know.

It also depends heavily on the person.

 

As far as what I have seen - and just en entirely other matter - a person with MS (MS in the end is a muscle disease - but ahead of that motor/nerve control issue) may reach out for a remote or tablet or anything, reaches out too far in front of the wheel chair and next lays on the floor before notice. Nothing is under control.

First I would do is build a "console" so everything (??) can be in reach without hassle with still the ability to very easily go elsewhere (with the wheelchair). Not easy at all, up to undoable if directed from a distance.

[Le Concombre Masqué]

Thank you all. Alexa and Sonos are very interesting leads as of now. Sonos' French site suggests Alexa will come to France ; VPN to UK services might be a solution in the meanwhile.

 

Peter, it's very difficult to assess her situation. Isabelle is my daughters' mother and though we always kept a very friendly and caring relationship we did not visit for a few years ; I'm quite shocked to face a reality that neither phone nor even Skype/Facetime quite revealed. She is very smart, so she is very smart to lie to everybody, herself included ; ie we went to see a movie yesterday but I have no idea of what she actually saw, taking into account that, just a while before, she confused a laurel leaf for a slice of bread on the kitchen table...

 

Factually : she works her speech with a pathologist and a singing teacher and sounds quite good. She was driven out of the plane on a wheelchair but otherwise walks slowly and shakingly with a cane and a helping arm. The PIN episode occurred when she insisted to pay and "rushed" from a resting position while a queue was forming behind me : hast was a factor ; she is able to type messages on her iPhone though with errors and mistakes while she was a maniac who never committed any and wrote 2 books...

[PeterSt]

@Le Concombre Masqué, may it help, part of the disease is the accentuation of being ill itself. Not because it is liked to express so by the person, but merely from a general "but I can't do that !". The danger in that (it really is) is that whatever you do you

a. you did not do it right;

b. you can not solve it.

 

IMO from the above follows that you should never apply something from your own good ideas. Thus ask what is to be done avoids problems largely and a suggestion "but you will get a nice remote with large keys !" won't help. The remote will have the wrong colour, is too heavy, should be flat instead of round and when *all* was made to suite, it still requires rubber feet which she can not arrange for or apply.

Message : you (the one helping) will be witch hunted.

And in your specific situation you might also need to deal with your partner who notices your phone ringing several times per day. Of course your excuse will be a best one, but still ...

 

I again put something in bold above, as it really may come to that because the person involved will have no measure. "I need help !" is, as said, part of the disease.

[Le Concombre Masqué]

25 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

@Le Concombre Masqué, may it help, part of the disease is the accentuation of being ill itself. Not because it is liked to express so by the person, but merely from a general "but I can't do that !". The danger in that (it really is) is that whatever you do you

a. you did not do it right;

b. you can not solve it.

 

IMO from the above follows that you should never apply something from your own good ideas. Thus ask what is to be done avoids problems largely and a suggestion "but you will get a nice remote with large keys !" won't help. The remote will have the wrong colour, is too heavy, should be flat instead of round and when *all* was made to suite, it still requires rubber feet which she can not arrange for or apply.

Message : you (the one helping) will be witch hunted.

And in your specific situation you might also need to deal with your partner who notices your phone ringing several times per day. Of course your excuse will be a best one, but still ...

 

I again put something in bold above, as it really may come to that because the person involved will have no measure. "I need help !" is, as said, part of the disease.

You seem to know quite a bit of her (Isabelle's) psychology though you never met... As of now her ageing, but in very good shape, helping mother is the hunted witch 

[PeterSt]

7 minutes ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

helping mother is the hunted witch

 

Of course I am not making fun of any situation like this and I am confident you don't either. But can you rephrase this is little, so I can understand ? (just another sentence will suffice, I suppose)

 

Btw, I had a couple of examples, but it went beyond your audio-aiding too much, so I scratched that.

[Le Concombre Masqué]

a friend outside the forum suggests a Cabasse solution that might well be The Solution :

 

http://www.cabasse.com/toute-gamme-streaming-cabasse-aujourdhui-pilotable-a-voix-google-home/

 

btw, I have not been very (if at all) active on this forum since Peter encouraged me to play real (and reality) loud. I simply enjoy. I bettered my room correction filter for one channel and tweaked the furniture a bit et voilà : butter smooth 92 dB forte and 94 dB choruses ; a vibrating door is the limit on some programs though

[Le Concombre Masqué]

22 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

Of course I am not making fun of any situation like this and I am confident you don't either. But can you rephrase this is little, so I can understand ? (just another sentence will suffice, I suppose)

 

Btw, I had a couple of examples, but it went beyond your audio-aiding too much, so I scratched that.

Peter you wrote : "Message : you (the one helping) will be witch hunted."

 

I tried to express : Peter, you're right, Isabelle's mother, who is helping her as much as she can, is witch hunted.

 

Although, the truth is that I think Isabelle is passed that phase ; WAS witch hunted, should I then say. I think yoga and group therapy helped

 

do not hesitate to PM if you wish to discuss the matter beyond this forum

[PeterSt]

17 minutes ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

I tried to express : Peter, you're right, Isabelle's mother, who is helping her as much as she can, is witch hunted.

 

Although, the truth is that I think Isabelle is passed that phase ; WAS witch hunted, should I then say. I think yoga and group therapy helped

 

Haha, I got confused by mothers and daughters and who is wi(t)ch. LOL

 

Just be careful about what you may get involved with forever. The gesture with a nice audio setup is a very nice one of course - I did the very same (but no Spotify existed back at the time).

And what I feel by now is that I am a kind of debunking your good intentions. I should not do that ...

[Le Concombre Masqué]

 

12 hours ago, PeterSt said:

 

Haha, I got confused by mothers and daughters and who is wi(t)ch. LOL

 

Just be careful about what you may get involved with forever. The gesture with a nice audio setup is a very nice one of course - I did the very same (but no Spotify existed back at the time).

And what I feel by now is that I am a kind of debunking your good intentions. I should not do that ...

not debunked ! I think we will end up giving either the Solos/Amazon or the Cabasse/Google a try and I'll provide feedback here

[PeterSt]

6 hours ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

not debunked ! I think we will end up giving either the Solos/Amazon or the Cabasse/Google a try and I'll provide feedback here

 

Yes, please do. It will tell me whether my "selfishly" decisions to better not introduce similar applications were, well, selfish (it surely feels like that).

[Le Concombre Masqué]

I dared help my ex wife. Bottom Line :Voice commands is NOT the way to go, attempts to make my ex-wife use Google Assistant led to complete failure ; thus, I guess Voice solutions by Apple or Amazon would have gone nowhere ; I have good hope that she consistently (I still have to do the hotline) masters the system via a tablet. I chose a solution* by Cabasse that can work either via Google Assistant or via tablet/smartphone.

 

Deep into Multiple Sclerosis my ex-wife has a hard time viewing things, coordinating her gestures, digging and memorizing new technical stuff (while she wrote a Management best seller and has been invited several times to teach in the prestigious/infamous French Ecole Nationale d’Administration..).

 

Cabasse’s Stream Amp allows to use Deezer in conjunction with Google Assistant.

 

For me, using GA/Cabasse apps to raise/lower the volume, switch radios worked like a charm.

Browsing Deezer was hit and miss with more misses than hits.

I soon dropped the option for my ex-wife to seek and play songs via Deezer.

I dropped completely the Google Assistant option for my ex-wife could not cope :

*with the simple though rigorous syntax required

*with the gesture required to input a rigorous syntax since it implies that the mike is ON when she speaks. There’s a lag between detection of speech by the mike/amp and actual capture and that led to truncated orders. For me it’s easy to discriminate between the pictogram of a mike (thus you touch it if you see it to make sure your orders will be completed) and dancing colored dots or bars (mike is ON); not for her.

 

Dropping Google Assistant, I had more choice than Spotify or Deezer.

 

I did not like Deezer’s interface, choice, extremely variable SQ and did not have to fight long to convince my ex-wife to pay double for Qobuz.

 

I stress here the necessity to plan ahead: 

*ex-wife was troubled by the move from Deezer to Qobuz though it should be transparent to her since she is unable to seek and store via any application. 

*Replacing her cheap Samsung by a top of the line might not be worth it, but the cheap tablet is no help ; typical : my ex mother in law had purchased a cheap tablet with the idea that it’s money thrown away anyway while my ex-wife could have a much better experience with a top pad she can afford anyway)

 

Qobuz is much more classy, delivers constant CD quality and I suspect it’s better integrated with Cabasse. I.e. I could easily create Playlists, one per artist she likes, would it be Glenn Gould or Massive Attack, and she has as simple as possible access via the Cabasse App on tablet here she finds them under “Playlists de l’application”.

 

I selected radios that I put under “Favoris de l’application” as well as tunes she works with her voice coach.

 

BTW 1 : it’s great ! I attended one of her lessons and that, singing, is something that she enjoys, physically enjoys, and that’s priceless

BTW 2 : her coach connected via Bluetooth (took a few seconds) his smartphone to the Cabasse’s Stream Amp, instead of plugging a cheap loudspeaker, to play base rhythm tracks and noticed immediate improvement in her singing.

BTW 3 The coach is also a sound engineer and music producer and approved the equalization that was automated by Cabasse in seconds (based on input of the speakers ‘type, that are Cabasse too, + their placement in the room) + my choice of minus 2 for treble in my ex-wife hard floor hard walls hard ceiling 10meters+/4.5 meters – (estimates) long narrow living room.

BTW 4 The coach first found that the system makes everything sound nice, urbane, stressing that his monitors stress defaults in recordings. But the differences between different masterings offered by Deezer for the same songs were mighty obvious and he could pinpoint options taken in the mix. In the end he thinks she’s lucky.  I think the system is urbane and urban : on my iPhone app that measured recently (peak) 92 dBC 3 meters from a piano in a sonorous church, 92 where I chose to seat comfortably in a free seating jazz concert and regularly measures the same 92 peak in my room with that app ( a calibrated mike connected to REW measures more) I measured 84 dB in my ex-wife’s flat as maximum authorized by my ex wife out of respect to her neighbors and it sounded good and I did not feel frustrated at all, the focus being on neat soundstage and transients rather than physicality.

BTW5 The system is not designed specifically for disabled persons and our elder daughter who lives in Montreal wonders if she can find Cabasse there, ex mother in law said she would listen to music if she had such a system and myself I suspect it beats mine (based on last Cabasse top of the line before SCS (coaxial coincidence), was much more expensive) on soundstage and percussion transients ; SCS is indeed very addictive. No CD or SACD ripping, no massive hires download storage, no crazy convolution filters design, when you’re not in a cost no object or cost over what is reasonable quest for “Absolute”, this Cabasse/Qobuz combo might be a bargain.

 

*System is:

http://www.cabasse.com/en/cabasse_product/stream-amp/

http://www.cabasse.com/en/cabasse_product/santorin-21/

http://www.cabasse.com/en/cabasse_product/io2-floorstanding/

[beerandmusic]

 

HEOS/ALEXA

 

 

can't be easier.

[Le Concombre Masqué]

8 hours ago, beerandmusic said:

 

HEOS/ALEXA

 

 

can't be easier.

pLEASE read my post and explain how HEOS/ALEXA circumvents the issues I thoroughly described :

 

"I dropped completely the Google Assistant option for my ex-wife could not cope :
*with the simple though rigorous syntax required
*with the gesture required to input a rigorous syntax since it implies that the mike is ON when she speaks. There’s a lag between detection of speech by the mike/amp and actual capture and that led to truncated orders. For me it’s easy to discriminate between the pictogram of a mike (thus you touch it if you see it to make sure your orders will be completed) and dancing colored dots or bars (mike is ON); not for her."

 

 

ie instead of respecting the simple syntax "JOUE la radio France Culture" (PLAY radio station France Culture) my ex wife kept inventing formula (I want, put on etc etc) that the apps would not accept