How I built an audio book reader for my nearly blind grandfather
1–10 of 44 posts
Re: How I built an audio book reader for my nearly blind grandfather
#2Great job and great product.
Re: How I built an audio book reader for my nearly blind grandfather
#3Wonderful project!
Re: How I built an audio book reader for my nearly blind grandfather
#4A lovely story about making something truly useful.
...running Debian Wheezy
Re: How I built an audio book reader for my nearly blind grandfather
#5Whooooa, I have identical situation with my grandparents!
And I solved it by buying them CD - Boombox and modifying the buttons. That way they can switch CD's themselves and they can also buy them. But your project is awesome with the remote uploading.
Burning all those CD's is soooo timeconsuming, but it's worth it - my grandpa has a lot of fun with those books!
Re: How I built an audio book reader for my nearly blind grandfather
#6Whooooa, I have identical situation with my grandparents! And I solved it by buying them CD - Boombox and modifying the buttons. That way they can switch CD's themselves and they can also buy them. But your project is awesome with the remote uploading. Burning all those CD's is soooo timeconsuming, but it's worth it - my grandpa has a lot of fun with those books!
Re: How I built an audio book reader for my nearly blind grandfather
#7Whooooa, I have identical situation with my grandparents! And I solved it by buying them CD - Boombox and modifying the buttons. That way they can switch CD's themselves and they can also buy them. But your project is awesome with the remote uploading. Burning all those CD's is soooo timeconsuming, but it's worth it - my grandpa has a lot of fun with those books!
Similar situation here too, but my grandmother sees enough and is able to use a laptop when I prepare a playlist. Inspiring project though, maybe I should take things up a notch (instead of resorting to a hard-to-use laptop) and make something similar.
One issue is that almost all Dutch audio books are abbreviated versions and even of those there are very few available. My grandfather is picky and my grandmother read nearly everything available at the library. The Internet has a bit more than the local library, but still not a lot. I myself just listen to audio books in English, but that's not an option for them.
Re: How I built an audio book reader for my nearly blind grandfather
#8It's a wonderful project. I'm sure you building it makes him a lot happier than if you had found something ready to buy.
Re: How I built an audio book reader for my nearly blind grandfather
#9OSX (and iOS) has great text to speech functionality with some quality voices. It is probably not of everybody, but for people who can use a laptop (or iPad) there is a lot of accessibility potential. I use the Ava speaker for reading long articles in the background while I do other things, and the voice is almost as good as a radio host.
Re: How I built an audio book reader for my nearly blind grandfather
#10Great story and project, however one typo.
> I spoke to my grandmother today because it's here birthday,
her