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My face. For no other IT product am I so grateful that something like this exists. But my goodness, this thing has cost me many a nerve. It is by far the best hardware and best software I know of in the PC eye control segment. But me and my standards again. Such a huge fuck up. I would be ashamed to put out such buggy products to customers.

The nurse's grief

Not a day goes by without my carer having to lend a hand. Unplugging and replugging the USB-C cable of the infrared camera is still the easiest exercise. More annoying are the many software bugs, er, features. Freeze after calibrating the camera, for example, when the programme is still running in full-screen mode and the manufacturer has unfortunately deemed it unnecessary to provide an option that would enable a carer to restart the system. Or when, after ten hours of completely stress-free continuous use, the camera suddenly decides to stop providing eye tracking data. Even better if, as in this photo, the camera and software freeze and prevent the restart as well as the on-screen keyboard. The ALS patient, who is competent in IT matters, somehow finds it difficult to explain how his speech computer is repaired when the speech computer is broken.

Apps full of errors

I don't even want to talk about the grandiose flop in the workflow and "look and feel" of the software. I now work with the module for direct control of the Windows interface. It's halfway passable if you change pretty much every single presetting of the supplier. I no longer use the "accessible apps" specially developed for customers like me, such as WhatsApp for eye control. Not only do they have memory leaks and eat up system performance, but half the functions there don't work. The supplier knows the problems. That's just the way it is. I'm telling you, develop some shit, get yourself a health insurance licence, then do a bit of lobbying and you're set.

If at least the things that basically work would always work, that would be a start. But no, I write a Facebook post for half an hour, click save, the app says it's been saved... but it hasn't. This happens again and again. WhatsApp messages are a real joy.

Different keyboards per programme

But so what? I would no longer use the apps anyway, since I realised that I'm not too stupid to type because I keep hitting the wrong keys, but that the manufacturer thinks it's funny to use different keyboards for different programmes. I can live with a reversed Y and Z. But if the grid (grid of the on-screen keyboard) is arranged squarely one above the other in the voice computer app, diagonally one above the other in the web browser and not squarely but cuboidally in Banking, then that is, well, I would like to call it cautiously suboptimal. In some programmes, in addition to the backspace key, there is an additional "delete all irrevocably, without going back and without recycle bin" key. Seriously? Who thinks up shit like that?

Technology from the last millennium

You want me to be objective? With pleasure. But that doesn't make my criticism any better. From a technical point of view, the Communicator software is outrageously outdated and incompatible with current technology. For example, only POP3 mail servers are supported. We had that in the 90s. Unencrypted password transfer, sent mails only on the device from which the message was sent, empty mailbox when changing computers and so on. Back to the past. Reminds me a bit of a cool chapter in Edward Snowden's biography when he talks about his childhood. It makes me feel like I did when I was 14. Those were the days. Dude, those days are over, dear medical device manufacturers, come on in this millennium.

Does not (yet) work with iPhone

When I asked my provider's sales staff about this, they explicitly confirmed that the software for SMS and mobile phone mirroring for the purpose of TAN generators and the Authenticator App could be used with my company iPhone X as well as with my private iPhone SE. So now I've got myself a third mobile phone contract and a stupid Google mobile phone with Android.

Autocomplete completely unusable

I also find it less than suboptimal, simply idiotic, that the different programme areas work with different vocabularies. But hey, even that can be topped in idiocy. The word suggestions of the auto-complete function change position with every character typed. It is practically impossible to focus on the right suggested word with your eyes while typing, because by the time you have your eyes there, the entry has already jumped to another tile.

Optical and acoustic feedback asynchronous to the input

However, these are admittedly very individual luxury problems that only I have. The thing is. The eye control detects my gaze. If it remains on a point for a certain time, it is optically signalled which button has been recognised and the click is triggered. The manufacturer supplies the software with a dwell time of 1500ms. This means that you watch a filling circle on the key in focus for one and a half seconds before the click is actually triggered. More than enough time to correct your gaze if it's the wrong button. Yeah, no, it's clear, I certainly don't wait a second and a half for each key. The supplier usually sets it down to 1200ms. When asked, I was told that there was a patient who used the software with only 600ms. In an ALS forum I asked the question, 425ms is the shortest I was told there. And then I come along with my special requests, which is what I'm used to. I have set the dwell time to 250ms. That's four characters per second, in theory at least. Unfortunately, the software can't go any faster. For my setting, I already have to switch off the optical signalling because it is permanently lagging behind. I only work with my imagination, where my gaze is directed and a simple click sound to acoustically signal a pressed key. But it stops at 250ms, because with a faster setting, even the confirmation click becomes asynchronous with the input. Then the software not only forgets to confirm some clicks, but also clicks, waits until I am at the next key and then confirms the previous key. Or not. You don't know. And that's despite the fact that I bought the latest, best-equipped and most powerful Surface Pro 8 instead of the cash register model - which would have been over five years old.

Quintessence

What I find so bitter about that? Every ten-year-old games console is more responsive. And more reliable. And costs a fraction of a fraction. You can do it with the sick...

And yet this system has grown on me like no other technical product. After all, it is the only tool that makes a social life possible for me in the first place. Schizophrenic.

No, the story doesn't end here. I still have a few stragglers.