Advice sought for ereader for limited hand movement

[canidae]

Hi All

Mum has lost most of the use of her arms although she can move her hands slightly and is now in a nursing home. It is a good home and the staff do care for her but obviously they cannot be next to her all the time to help her read books.

I am looking at whether I could modify a kindle by removing the page forward/reverse buttons and adding extra wires to switches she can hold in each hand from a distance so the ereader can be fixed to a solid base and moved to her eyeline.

The kindle would need to have the sleep functions disabled as I want to keep it simple for her (mum is now 79 years old new memory problems).

Mum was an avid reader before becoming ill and I am sure being able to help her read what she wants at the speed she desires to would be a help.

Has anyone seen a kindle with similar mods?

I would think the keyboard version is the easiest to convert looking at mods I have seen.

Have looked at tablets with a Bluetooth mouse but would prefer a dedicated ereader platform

Many thanks in advance

[meeera]

It's possible - here's an expensive commercial large-button switch:

http://www.orin.com/access/pagebot/

And take a look at this:

http://breadboardconfessions.blogspot.ch/

I think that it's also worth considering a tablet with voice control, given that you'll be setting up a stand (so the weight's irrelevant) and in a nursing home there should always be a power point nearby (so the battery life's irrelevant).

[dsmid]

This should be possible with slightly modified (software-wise) Kindle 3 or 4 + Raspberry Pi + Wi-Fi dongle.
I can take care of the software changes, hardware changes involve connecting buttons/switches to GPIO pins of Raspberry Pi.
This solution requires Wi-Fi connection but no wires are needed between Kindle and Raspberry.
Alternatively you can connect Raspberry and Kindle with a USB cable and establish a USB network.

Details:
GPIO input change (detected by polling /sys/class/gpio/gpioN/value) would trigger sending command echo "send 109" > /proc/keypad (Page Up) or echo "send 104" > /proc/keypad (Page Down ) over SSH/Wi-Fi to Kindle.
See https://developer.ridgerun.com/wiki/...e_GPIO_signals

[dsmid]

Another alternative could be using an Android phone/tablet with AutoVoice, Tasker and Tasker SSH Command Launcher to execute those commands on Kindle over SSH/Wi-Fi.
Page turn could be triggered with a tap on phone/tablet touchscreen or with a voice command.
This solution won't require any hardware modifications.

[canidae]

Thanks for your responses.
Unfortunately mum has deteriorated and cannot speak much and has we hope temporarily lost the use of her hands.
Is there any way of creating an add on to turn a page after 30 seconds or another set period of time?

[sirmaru]

This app turns pages for sheet music using a timer on the Kindle Fire. Perhaps, it could turn eBook pages as well. You'd have to try it.

http://www.amazon.com/MCM-Web-Soluti...ds=page+turner

Also, just tapping a Kindle Paperwhite screen can turn pages for eBooks.

[alansplace]

Hands Free Page Turner

http://airturn.com/

The AirTurn BT-105 is compatible with many apps for iPad & Android tablets, as well as most Mac and PC document and presentation programs.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by canidae

Unfortunately mum has deteriorated and cannot speak much and has we hope temporarily lost the use of her hands.

Do you mean that she is completely unable to move her arms and hands, or that she is not able to perform fine motor skills such as pushing buttons, but can still hold larger objects, such as the size of a pen, and move her arms in a controlled manner?

If it's the first, I don't have any suggestions besides the ones posted already. If the latter is true, the solution may be simpler.

My sister's mother in law suffered a stroke, and temporarily lost most of her fine motor skills in her hands and fingers, but she could still hold things when grabbed, and she could move her arms, all be it slowly. (It's going better now, a year later; almost back to normal.)

To make her tablet usable, her husband built a very heavy wooden tablet stand, and got a big stylus. The stand was heavy enough as not to move when the tablet is tapped with the stylus. Sometimes, that tap comes in quite hard, because she didn't have enough control.

The Kindle does not have a strong screen, but many tablets do. They are virtually scratch resistant and can't be damaged as long as you don't drop them. (And most styli have a rubber tip, even the ones for touch screens.)

Maybe it would be worth it to take a look into a 10 inch tablet, a very heavy stand (or maybe even an Ergotron display arm, so it can be moved, somewhat modified to hold the tablet instead of a display), and a big stylus to be used on capacitive touch screens. You could be done for a very low price compared to a page bot, and your mum would be able to select her own books.

The tablet can be powered continuously by just keeping it plugged into the wall socket.

[Ian.M]

It would be worth looking at the DIY Kindle voice control (simulating key presses) thread. Ignore the voice recognition stuff! That thread has the basics of fully controlling a kindle via emulated key presses over WiFi or USB (USB network mode). As the kindle will need to be powered anyway if sleep is disabled, USB is vastly preferable.

As Dsmid pointed out earlier, probably the easiest way to implement the host computer that controls the kindle would be to use a Raspberry PI. It has enough I/Os to handle the switch interfacing required. There are many other embedded USB hosts that would be suitable but IMHO they have much steeper learning curves than a PI and with their development tools, are likely to be less cost effective for a one-off project.

On the Kindle side of things, you are probably looking at a K4 (non-touch) as all functions are accessible with only 9 buttons and controller directions to emulate.

If there is an existing accessibility device in use that has a serial output and the facility to add additional functions, it may be possible to do without the PI, by interfacing directly to the Kindle serial port and writing a daemon to directly interpret the serial accessibility control stream, but that would require hardware mods to the Kindle to bring out the serial port and add level converters, and IMHO it is better from a long term support and reliability point of view to keep the kindle 'vanilla' apart from software hacks so a replacement device can easily be substituted.

[stickybuns]

Originally Posted by canidae

Thanks for your responses.
Unfortunately mum has deteriorated and cannot speak much and has we hope temporarily lost the use of her hands.
Is there any way of creating an add on to turn a page after 30 seconds or another set period of time?

If you can get your hands on an old Kindle Keyboard, you can set up the text-to-speech so that it will turn the pages at a set rate. If you mum isn't interested in listening to the computerized voice, just turn the volume way down.

Alternatively, if you have an iOS device (and probably Android too, but I don't know how they work), you can set up the Accessibility controls so that Siri will read the book out loud. Again, you can control the speed and turn down the volume. This article also might be of interest: http://www.dvice.com/2013-6-27/hidde...ipad-your-head

Sending much love to you and your mum!

[Barbara1955]

You might consider contacting your local Rehab Offices they may know a company or brand to work for you mom.