Digital To Voice Translator.

Can you get the data in printed form? If so then several packages are available. My nearly blind brother in Law got a scanner and software package that converts printed data into sound from CNIB - Canadian National Institute for the Blind.

Please explain how does this works? what does your BIL has to do in order to listen to the text?

Wangito.

The scanner is a holding fixture with touch reference so you can position a page by feel. The scanning is based on optical character recognition then this character forms words which is then enounciated. I think one software package is called 'Dragon"

I met a writer of childrens books back in 1996 who was almost blind and she used something similar. She dictated words into a microphone which then converted it to text and saved it. Back then the software was less intuitive. Her software could also read text and speak the words but back then the voice was very mechanical. It sounded like a machine. the newer vesions are much improved.

You could try contacting CNIB via their website then explain your needs are and see what they can offer. CNIB has been active in R&D fior using computers to assist the blind for 3 decades that I know of. Being from another country may not be an impediment.

Thanks a bunch. I really appreciate your help, but this concept is not going to work. I need to read the digital stream from the sensor to the digital display.

Again, Thanks

I thought so but doesn't some of these weather instruments also provide a print function?

The other way would be to place the display right on the scanner tablet so the camera can seethe display digits.

Is this a rrepetetive action with every update or do you only need to check weather data at less frequent intervals.

I do not know if you areattempting to provide a work station for a weatther observer or a home application so a blind lerson can check the weatherjust before they go out.

Davis Ohio Scientific and others tend to be secretive about the insides of their instruments.

Consider marine instruments developed as 'sensors' that output their data to a network. This data is provided in a protocol whose specificattions is published.

NMEA 0183 or NMEA 2000 which is a newer bidorectional protocol. The sentence structure is known and can be read by third party equipment.

Step by step.

He positions the page on the scanner carriage. He can feel where it sits.

When he feels the page is at 'start' the opttical scanning begins when he pushes the START BUTTON. It doesn't take long to determine if you truly got the scanner started at the right place on page. It looks like the scanner determines end of a word by the white space between letters. So it reads the letters determine what the word is then voices it.

For your weather data I suspect you may have to manage the printting function so data blocks are separated by blank spaces or even by line.

"Digital Data Stream" is very vague. For a normally-sighted person, somewhere in the chain of events, there is likely to be some conversion to ASCII characters. There are a number of "screen readers" that can read ASCII text- a good Open Source solution would be Orca (http://live.gnome.org/Orca). There is also a commercial screen reader called "Jaws" (Windows-based) that does the same thing.

For your preferred weather system, you could use one of the "Communications Options" like the "Vantage Connect" or the "Vantage Connect Retrofit Kit" offered under the "Communciations Options" to the lower right on your linked web site.

GA

cwarner is exactly right. The format of the data stream is the key.

If it's ascii, it could be placed into a text document which can be directly verbalized by Win7 or Vista (don't remember if XP has the capability built in) or use any number of packages available for Unix/Linux.

Even my Kindle can verbalize a variety of ebook formats the data stream could be converted to. Or build your own with an Arduino board (google "arduino speech synthesizer").

Hooker

I may be jumping in with unhelpful information - this isn't my field, but if you are running windows 7, your computer has built-in accessability options. You can set it to run without a monitor and everything will be transfered into voice. Open "Ease of Access Center" and click "Turn on Narrator".