Speach transcription with my new EvenRealities G1 smartglasses

Assistive Listening Devices
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After some days of testing my new assistive devices I wanted to share my experiences here.

They are the newest smart glasses, since several days now, on the market at the moment.

Speciality of these ones is that they are the only ones focusing on a normal glasses look.
Second property they are the only ones focusing on speech and text.
And the third property the only ones available with prescription glasses at the moment.

At the moment they are available in just one frame, but three colors. And you can buy an additional sunscreenclip to them also.

My impression at the moment:
These glasses struggle as all hearing aids mainly in speach in noise. And as they only have their own speakers do not solve that problem.

Here you see some pictures how they look like in comparance to my normal glasses I use to wear.

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What they can do for hearing impaired people is great. And I hope that many of us will have a look and bring this startup company to higher levels.

I already was dreaming about connecting to hearing aids or assistive devices as Phonak Roger’s by using there better speech recognition. As for now these glasses are catching voices by it’s own relative good microphones. But imagine how it would be as voices are better separated from noise as Hearing Aids already are made for and do.

These glasses make it possible to have a conversation with someone and read what you and they are saying. You can even listen to a conversation in a foreign language and have it translated for you. In the upper field you can read the original text spoken and by tilting you’re head down a bit you can read the translation to it. You don’t have to look on your phone for this text, actually just look the person you are talking with in the eyes.

Imagine you are in Japan or somewhere else in the world and asking for a known popular place (or an address you show on paper). The guy talks to you in his own language and you read the translation in your glasses.

You even don’t have to ask for an unknown place as these glasses give you the possibility to use the build in navigation app. See the instructions and the map in your glasses screens and hear them in your hearing aids with your phone in your pocket.

Another capability is reading text from notes and get notifications on your glasses screen. See the time, day and the temperature by just tilting your head a little upwards.

What you cannot do with them, and that’s the difference made here, is looking at a colored screen to movies, take pictures or make films. Because there is no camera mounted and it is a monochrome screen.
But exactly that’s the great advantage of only these glasses at the moment. I love it.

I must say I’m very impressed already on the first day I started wearing these glasses. And I’m looking forward to see what else this company will bring to hard of hearing people like me.

If you have any questions there are coming up now first reviews from early bakers and early adapters so you can search for that on the internet. Or just ask me and I hope I can help you a bit in answering questions.

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I am now using Xander glasses but the battery life is only about 2 hours. How is the battery on these glasses. Also Xander seems to have a problem keeping up with conversations and reinitializes fairly often. How the G1 at keeping up with conversations? Does the person talking have to speak slowly? What about performance in a noisy environment like at a restaurant? Is it possible to use a remote microphone or is that not necessary? Any comments about the actual use to transcribe conversations in real time appreciated.

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@Member150
I have to make more mileage to be better informed about the battery time. But you can use these as normal glasses because of the weight of them and the possibility to have a glasscorrection fitted. And the battery last the whole day as you don’t use it continuesly in a heavy mode
I compare it to my Sphere’s hearing aids which also want last the whole day if I would only use the Spheric mode. Today I used about two hours of navigation without running out of batteries.

In normal usage you look upwards to get information you handle by your phone or just pass, look at a few notes, make a conversation, read a note or get a pop-up message.

You can have hours of transcription but the negative is as I said you cannot use it in to much noise, just for conversation to someone next or in front of you.

Compare it to your phone google translate. You don’t have to talk slowly, but clearly. (I used to dictate since round 2000 in speech recognition programs and they are still getting better). But there is a small lag in showing the text also comparable to google or transcription software. And it also does not work if the speaker is to far away or it is to noisy also comparable to the phone apps you can use these days.

But in case of the glasses you don’t have to put your phone on the table or hold it in your hands and point it to someone. The microphones used are between your ears and eyes so in optimal position. And the speech is projected transparent in front of you in your glasses where you look at the person you are talking to. I used a microphone in front of my mouth in former years to do my dictation- work but the glasses have good enough microphones themselves.

So at the moment it can not do better or faster! But it does it more comfortable. And in case you use it in a restaurant you have to be close enough to the person you’re talking to as in real life too.

You cannot use an external microphone at the moment. And I hope they soon develop the possibility to grab the improved speech determination of the hearing aids in the future as it will do much better of course for the speech recognition. Requests for such an improvement I send already to the developers. But would be happy if others do so also. They’ll need the customers to ask for future improvement. And I believe it would make many of us very happy.

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Thanks for the reply and your comments are very informative.

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Emile, thank you for sharing your initial impressions and it would be great if you could post a couple of follow up posts as you use these glasses day to day.

Just a few questions if you don’t mind.

What functionality do the glasses provide?

I’m most interested in the speech to text but other capabilities are very interesting.

At the moment I’ve seen mention of:

  • Display of speech to text (can this be used to store transcriptions?).
  • Translation of speech to text
  • Navigation directions (do you have to use a specific app).

How do you initiate these features, do you set them running on your phone and the glasses act as the display or can the glasses act independently?

Do the glasses have any audio output?

Is it possible to interact with Siri, Google, Alexa, ChatGPT via voice via the glasses.

How are you finding the comfort and the battery life?

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@AlexE

To answer a few of your questions. These glasses are not from a known brand. It’s made by a startup company, but they seem to be very trustworthy and serious. Have a good support where you can ask questions and propose for additional futures.

The functional abilities I can show you on a screenshot of my phone here.

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You can read the spoken text if you go to the “translate” button on your phones G1 on the phone screen. At the same time you’ll see the spoken text in your glasses. The original text (whatever language you choose) will be project if you tilt your head a little bit upwards. The translated text (could be the same if you just use it for reading the speech in your own language) you’ll see if you tilt your head a bit downwards.
Unfortunately untill now the possibility of saving the text is not there. But just ask the EventRealities company for further futures. It would be very useful. What I do is copy the most interesting parts in screenshots I make of them.
Another solution would be using the notes function, which allows you by button hold on your glasses to dictate for max 30 seconds.

There is a build in navigation programm, a simplified one witch works only for walking and biking, but not for cardriving because of law restriction I think.
This application is very precise uses your phone for the GPS data in meters or miles. Every small bend or sideway is shown in a double way by again tilting up or down your head just a little bit. One shows a map with a directional long line where you can appreciate the line over the map. The other one shows you exactly in how many meters you’ll come to a next turn point and in how many minutes or seconds you will be at that point. In my hearing aids I hear the spoken text if there are instructions.
As additional future you also could have a look at your phone screen which gives another kind of viewing information, nice to see also but not a must to use. The phone can be in your pocket with the screen out. It stays connected.

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The futures can be initiated as shown in the most upper printscreen above but you can personalize almost everything the way you want it. You have tap and push buttons behind your ears which you change in the programm settings shown in these printscreens

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No the output is regulated by your phone operating system. So in my case I stream to my hearing aids.
Some people on the fora already asked for futures like Siri, Google and Alexa. They will work on it but didn’t promise anything untill now. They first want to have their product perfect. Different frames, bugs solving, implementing better functionality etc.
A ChatGPT function it already has, but very primitive. You can not ask additional questions to the answers you get. You have to ask the specific question as a new one.

Comfort is like my own glasses. The nose feet can be corrected to your nose. The arms give a light but comfortable pressure on my face. The weight is a higher then my titan glasses, but about the same as my heavier glasses. Depending on glass or plastic lenses.
And the battery life is exceptional. You can put it onto your nose and leave it there untill you go to bed. But of course you could not use the intensive futures continuesly. It is like my Phonak Spheres 90, 4 hours or a bit more in very loud noise or more then one day if I use it as it is ment for. Comparable here. And if you want to load the battery you can put it in the box for a short time where it has extra loading capacity as my ChargeGo from Phonak without the need of a socket.

Hope this helps.

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Emile,

Thank you very much for taking the time to provide this detailed reply.

I was looking to see if I could deliver some of this functionality via a phone and some AR/VR monitor glasses along the lines of the XReals.

I’d be very interested in your thoughts as you continue to wear them.

One last question, do you see phone notifications mirrored to the glasses.

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That’s another kind of stuff. Those glasses are not specifically ment for text reading, more for gadget like things. Looking at movies, doing computer things through the glasses or making movies or pictures. The G1 are there for more reading and translation of speach like functions. No camera etc.
Those glasses are also not available with optical perfect lenses with or without prescription. Either are they so comfortable you can wear them all day long, nor do they have acceptable battery live.

Yes, you can have these in your glasses, for instance if you don’t want them as a beeping sound in your ear. But by now you cannot read the whole messages f.i. e-mails.
In the “app filter” under settings I can manage all my apps that support a notification. In my case 33 apps. Like messenger, Facebook, Todolist, bankaccount, Outlook, telegram, callapp etc. Just toggle on or off notification. On the glasses I am able to scroll trough.

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Still wearing my glasses and still very happy with the results.
The speech recognition as well as the speech transcription are more accurate then with the usual tools as google translate. Best method would of course be giving text to translate instead of speech. But that’s another story.

These EvenRealities G1 use an additional AI for the speech understanding. You can see that build op in front of your eyes if sentences which are not finished jet get corrected during the caption of the speech.
It actually works the same way my expensive professional speech dictation did. During dictation I had the text corrections in front of me on the computer.

Don’t be disappointed by the delay time as you can imagine that the human brain also needs the context of words to clearly understand what has been said and create the sentence afterwards.

And as I sometimes get things wrong the system used is also not always perfect. But it really helps me a lot to get the additional information written in front of my eyes. And my brains will compose the correct information I need. Without saying what did you say, can you repeat it, sorry I didn’t understand can you spell it for me.
And the delay really is not that bad it would disturb the conversation.

I’m really very impressed and hope this will help hearing impaired’s a lot in the near future. And I’m happy to be in front of the row of users with my new gadget able to experience these great glasses. I feel like in the time about 25 years ago to be amongst the first to experience with the professional real-time dictation software.

The glasses are of exceptional good quality. Not just glas for glasses but very clear glas and without any irregularity or failure. So no problem to wear these as glasses all day. The weight is comparable with bigger glasses then these glasses actually are, but that’s fine.

If it gets darker the green glow from the fields where the text is projected gets more obvious for people looking at you. If I put on my additional sunclips this reduces the glow. And by sunny weather the sunclips are nice to have as otherwise the daylight is a bit disturbing my text. Is it a point people see the glow? I don’t know, they also see my hearing aids if they will. I don’t care. But then I’m glad they don’t see any camera’s as with other AR glasses and they could think I’m filming them and get a punch on the nose for that. Also these glasses look very normal in format and are slik.

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Hi Emile,

You have had them for a month, could you give us an update on your glasses, do you still wear them and have you found them useful?

In your earlier post you have some normal glasses, do you have prescription lenses in the G1s or do you wear them with contact lenses?

How comfortable are they for wearing long term?

Which features do you find you use?

Best regards

Alex

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@AlexE
Sorry for the late respons. Had a lot on my mind last weeks and didn’t talk to many people.

I still do like the glasses. They remind me of my hearing aids in the way they give me some additional information I don’t get by only listening to people talking.
But they struggle in situations whit background noise more then my hearing aids. Watching tv is possible also with the glasses but mostly I use the written text on the tv and use the BT streaming to my HA’s. As tv is not just speach to listen to.

I use them as a routeplanner also and they are more useful then navigation on the phone because I can tilt my head a bit more or less to get exact information about the way to go although it isn’t that detailed. But you don’t need that to be very detailed as a navigation app. Instead of that the glasses give you a more precise info about your walking speed ant the distance to go. You don’t have to hold your phone, it is in your pocket. And information is coming into my hearing aids which way to go. I think for in a car it would be to distracting.

Wearing the glasses in darker situations gives the greenish glans in your eyes and people can see this if they look at you more then I initially thought. The sunglasses give an extra remedy, but who wears sunglasses as it is darker.

In translation it does a good job. My phone is also very usable, but then I have to stare continuesly to my phone and I imagine that people I talk to rather appreciate they think I look them in the eyes when I listen to them.

It’s no problem wearing the glasses whole day long as you can adjust them a bit on your head and nose to fit better. My problem is that in my age I need two pairs of glasses and sometimes even three. So I’m having a bit of a problem depending on what I’m doing during the day. And another thing is that I don’t want them to get wet, but that’s the same struggle with my hearing aids.

I don’t have the prescription lenses, but they are available to an extra cost. Most of the time I use my lenses and the glasses. The glasses are really high quality. The visibility of the text in the glasses is not depending on that, for me with or without lenses always very sharp.

For me they are great as an ALD and also translation help. But also in navigation as I do walk a lot. Others are very happy with notifications and many like the teleprompt, which I don’t use.

Relevant questions are discussed and answered on Reddit which I really can advice you to read when interested in these glasses. It’s good because all negative and also positive properties are discussed in a growing forum of about 920 members at the moment. https://www.reddit.com/r/EvenRealities/s/hY7w6r9T1T

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Thank you once again for your detailed reply, I’ll head off to Reddit to see if I can learn more.

Best regards

Alex

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Sounds interesting. I didn’t read all the posts in detailed. Just skimmed for the gist of the conversations.

One thing that pops into my head. In reading the text on your glasses, does that cause any eye movements or facial expressions that your “conversees” find distracting? I would think that there might be an “uncanny valley” effect in using them.

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@jim_lewis
Sorry for responding so late.
I didn’t ask the ones I spoke. But I think you have to look long in someones eyes to be aware of something and I don’t think people are doing that.
I also didn’t read someone reporting it so far.
You actually are reading the text which is about 2 meters in front of you projected. So that’s where your talking partner is standing at that moment. So your eyes don’t move during reading and you focus wherever you want.

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Some thoughts at the moment.
My enthousiasm has turned down a bit now I got used to these ER G1 smartglasses.

Still I think they can be very usefull. But you have to be aware of needing the futures they could offer you. And yes it could do better if refined a bit as I said in former posts. Still hoping for the future.

If you are an eyeglass wearer I think it is more useable as it gives you some extra options. And yes it costs a bit and maybe you have to be a kind of cadget lover too.

Other smartglasses untill now are less serving hearing impaired people. No other glasses last almost two days on 1 battery charge.
No other smartglasses have professional glass and untill now also offer prescription lenses.

As I like to be objective myself I like to post a clear negative review on YouTube. Have a look if you’re really interested in spending the money. It takes about 13 minutes.

I would like to give some comments on his in my eyes objective good review.
About the impression of the nosepads:
These are to be used as prescriptive glasses. So the arms and nosepads have to be fitted to your head which you can do yourself or have done by your opticare. Then this problem would be solved.

In to much light they become useless:
This problem can be solved by wearing the additional available sunclip. That’s what sunglasses are for.

The visibility of the screenprojection observed.
Yes it is visible, but probably about as much as in other smartglasses. My hearing aids are also clearly visible, but often enough I have to ask people I’m talking to to mind my HA’s as they didn’t notice. My HA’s and glasses I’m not wearing for fun but for function.

Not a good fitting when wearing headphones:
As a hearing impaired I nowadays do not wear headphones very much because I rather stream to my HA’s. That sound is good enough for many hearing impaired’s I would think. And I have bidirectional streaming, so no need for a microphone. But yeah if you have to wear them it is not feeling good. At the other hand also my normal glasses irritate me if using a headphone.

Much more expensive then f.i. Rayban smartglasses.
Yes, that’s true. If you’re a vlogger and want to make videos or want to make pictures… Play around with asking Google lens etc. then that’s another usecase. I don’t want a spycamera on my nose to understand what people say to me. For my flightsimulator or gaming I still use my big VR glasses.
My prescription glasses cost about the same and have the best glasses in it.

It is like comparing OTC’s with real HA’s. Do I want to listen to music, yes I do very much. But after my first, second and third HA’s I came to the conclusion that the solution for speech and music isn’t that simple. As isn’t the solution for getting speech to my head simple either.

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Even Realities Officially Supports Open Source

Ever since we launched G1, we’ve received countless appeals to implement an open source format. Even Realities not only takes your feedback into account, we take action in a continuous effort to refine your G1 experience.

We’re building an open source community to unlock user customization — giving you the power to shape the future of G1. Together, we can create the most optimal features and an even more stunning display.

Join Even Realities GitHub at Even Realities · GitHub to connect directly with our engineers and designers.

You can find it on GitHub

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