Dynavox Continues to Respond (The Committed Folks That They Are)

From my inbox nine this morning (must have been the first thing done after putting down the coffee and turning on the computer):

"Dear Kate Ahern:

We are stopping the sale of the Series 4 products – MT4 and DV4 – in most areas on October 1, 2007. However, we will be fully supporting this product for a long time to come.

With all of our products – going back to the Dynavox, Dynavox 2C, Dynavox 3100, etc – we supply life-time technical support. We will always answer the phone for any device – forever. What we also strive to do is to be able to repair the devices for as long as possible. At a minimum, we shoot for being able to have the parts to repair a device for 5 years after the given device was actually sold. If we offer repairs for a longer time period, we do. Currently, we are holding the parts in our inventory to do this for the MT4 and DV4. Some of these parts are no longer available from the people who produced them. This is one of the factors leading us to discontinue this product line – to ensure that we have an adequate amount of parts to fully support those with existing products. Other factors are the drop off in volume in preference to the new V and Vmax; and the realization that many of those that are buying what MT4 and DV4 devices are still being sold are doing so without having known to also trial the V or Vmax.

Jason McCullough
Product Manager
DynaVox Technologies"

Good to know, since I have that Dynavox 2c under my bed!

Dynavox DV4/MT4 Discontinued

The Dynavox DV4/MT4 will no longer be sold as of October 1st, 2007. With that news came a rampant rumor in the special education field that Dynavox would discontinue support of the series four devices. I just wanted to post the following from the press release about the discontinuation to ease everyones' minds (including mine).

"All Series 4 customers and their care teams will continue to be supported by the augmentative and alternative communication industry’s best technical support team for the life of their product. Additionally, we guarantee repair service will be available for these devices for five years from the date of purchase."

I have e-mail the vice president of Dynavox LLC asking him to reiterate this for the audience of this blog and when he responses I will post it.

The Dynavox Series Four is an amazing device that was (and really still is) vastly superior to the other devices of its type on the field. That being said, the Dynavox V series surpasses the series four dramatically. Have no doubts that even if the V series is more than the user needs (the only reason to chose the series four over the V) it is a spectacular device. Better more than less!

AAC Device News

I had a training with our sales rep/trainer from Dynavox today and I had an e-mail from DJ at Great Talking Box about the Touchspeak hand held. So I have lots to share.

First the Dynavox, we were training on the DV4, but also had a chance to take another look at the Dynavox V. I learned a couple tricks I didn't know, for example there is an assessment feature on the DV4 series (and the V series) that allows teachers and therapists to assess and train the access, language and cognition parts of using the device.

Also, I learned about the usage counter which will keep data on how many times a student accesses a particular button (a feature Speaking Dynamically Pro also has). Perhaps the next upgrade of the Dynavox products will be a data collection tool that creates a log of what pages were accessed, which buttons were pressed, dates and times of those items, averages of pages accessed and buttons pressed by time of day, etc. (Basically I want the Dynavox to keep data the way my Animas insulin pump keeps data. On my pump I can look at or download logs of insulin use and blood glucose by times of day, averages based on various criteria and any notes I entered into the system. Something along those lines would be great on the Dynavox.)

During the Dynavox training Lori (our rep) gave me a copy of some of the new Dynavox advertisement material. At first I couldn't figure out why she was giving it to me, then I realized that I am quoted (via this blog) on the flyer. Very cool. My colleagues think I should get kick-backs.

We also heard today about the new Dynavox Palm Top (photo above) due out in June. All I have to say about this is "Hallelujah!", the ChatPC 3 is a total pain in the rear end (on the software end, not the hardware end) and the ChatPC 2 is no longer being sold (it was pretty decent on the software side, but not the hardware side). If Dynavox has taken their skill and talent for creating innovative, consumer focused AAC software and applied it to the same hardware as the Chat PC 3 it should be an excellent device. I can't wait to see it in action. Now we have another reason to count down until June, besides summer vacation.

As I mentioned I also heard news about the TouchSpeak today. I had e-mailed DJ on behalf of a speech therapist friend looking for some ideas for a client. DJ let me know that the device will run on the HTC Dopod phone, which has a five inch screen and 5 1/8" wide by 3 3/4" high by 5/8" thick for dimensions. He will send me the weigh, the price, and the rental price tomorrow. It should be ready for rentals in June.

Eye Tracking Cat

Turning a Dynavox Into a TV/VCR Remote

As promised I am spending my afternoons this week teaching myself how to program a Dynavox DV4 as an environmental control unit. I tried to set up some x10 commands first, but was unsuccessful (missing a part).

Since you don't need any extra parts to control an infrared remote control I tried that next. We don't generally watch TV or movies at school, but what the heck, I can learning how to program them with one remote and it should generalize to another remote.

It was crazy easy to turn the DV4 into a remote control! I went into the Dynavox Knowledge Base and found the info I needed, by searching for "ir". I followed the first part of the directions there (setup -> tools -> ir browser) then I checked tv power and start IR learning. As soon as I clicked start I pressed the power button on the remote, which I had aimed at the top of the DV4. Then I pressed "stop learning" and "test". It worked! I could turn the TV on and off from across the room!

I repeated the same steps for channel up, channel down, volume up and volume down. I learned that when you press the remote as you aim it into the DV4 you only need to press it once or else the Dynavox will learn to change a whole bunch of channels fast or jack the volume up. Although, seeing as this is a teenager's device, maybe having it fly through the channels and blast the volume isn't such a bad idea, at least as far as being age appropriate.

I was so excited to get the Dynavox working as the TV remote that I wanted to show someone, but I felt like a bit of a loser envisioning myself bringing it into the hallway to show the teenagers lurking around waiting for their music lessons in the room next door. So I had to settle for a blog entry.

So there you have it, easy as pie, programming a Dynavox series four as a remote control!

Dynavox

Yesterday this site was visited by someone from Dynavox! That is really exciting to me! Although the DV4 includes a few of my AAC pet peeves, I really love the Dynavox device we have in my classroom. So in honor of the visit from some random person who works at Dyanvox (I know they were here from my Stat Counter logs) this will be a review of the Dynavox MT4/DV4.

To preface my review I should mention the other dynamic display devices my students, past and present, have used that act as a comparison in my head. I have had students with the Freestyle, the Gemini, the Mercury and the MiniMerc from Assistive Technology, Inc., the ChatPC from Satillo, the Optimist 2 from Zygo, and the E-Talk from Great Talking Box. Before there were dynamic display devices I worked with students who ran Speaking Dynamically (not Pro, just Speaking Dynamically) on old school laptops mounted to their wheelchairs and before that I worked with a Light Talker, a Macaw by Zygo and many, many communication books and boards made by photocopying symbols from a book, cutting them up, coloring them, gluing them to pages and laminating them.

Back to the Dynavox DV4/MT4, I have had a DV4 in the classroom for almost a year. A first I was worried about the speech therapist choosing a device I didn't have experience with (especially since the last device, the Optimist II had been and continues to be a disaster for us), but a few demonstrations from the local vendor and I was on board.

When the device arrived it was tricky to learn a whole new system of programming. While some features are similar to Speaking Dynamically Pro and the platform the ChatPC uses, many are not. Furthermore much of the more "advanced" programming I wanted to do was not in the manual and directions can only be found on the website.

Once it was up and running, however, I grew to love the DV4 as did my student. I think her favorite feature is using it to play MP3s, she has a friend in the class who loves music and will (verbally) request songs, she loves to be the DJ. She also takes great delight in using it in the community to order at coffee shops.

My favorite features of the DV4 are:

1. now that I know what I am doing I can make new pages in minutes
2. being able to make pages in minutes means I can program a month worth of academic pages, based on my lesson plans for the next thematic unit, in an afternoon or two
   
3. the battery lasts the entire school day 99% of the time
4. it plays MP3s, which makes my student happy - if she's happy I'm happy
5. the untapped potential for environmental controls that my student will be able to take advantage of once we figure them out
   
6. the online resources are rich and online courses can be used for my professional development
7. the fact that everything saves automatically as you program
8. the included carrying case is safe, well padded and easy to carry
9. the glare isn't as bad as some other devices
10. the fact that you can combine cells to make bigger buttons with in a page if you need to
11. the pre-programmed pages are not difficult to figure out and are a nice guide
12. the feature that automatically adds personal information to pre-programmed pages makes the initial use of the device easier
13. in the nine months or so we have had it we have not needed to get it repaired, knock on wood, that is a record compared to the Optimist and the ChatPCs
14. the volume can be adjusted to make it loud enough to be heard in the cafeteria or community and quiet enough to use in the public library
    

Here are a few things I don't like:

1. the constant need to do a soft reset during programming
   
2. the lousy mount that has to be held in place by, I kid you not, a pink shoelace I tore out of the package during a community based instruction trip when the mount kept dropping the device to the floor *this is not the DV4 or Dynavox's fault, this is the fault of the cruddy mount company*
   
3. the manual doesn't have anything more than the absolute basics
4. the lack of vendor support (this may be unique to our situation, the person for our area was replaced right after we received the device and we can't seem to get his replacement to show up)
5. the key guard is poorly designed (as in my students fingers are constantly getting caught in it and I had to add velcro to it because it kept falling off
6. the volume in controlled inside the communication pages or control panels - no external knob or lever for quick fixes that are so often needed (that is the only feature I like about the Optimist II)
7. the rental price is outrageous
   

It should be noted that 2 of my complaints have nothing to do with the device or the company itself and one (the key guard) won't apply to many people.

The benefits of the Dynavox Dv4/MT4 are multiple and the complaints pale in comparison. I have recommended this device to other teachers in my school and now there are quite a few students with them in our community. The next time we are in the selection process for a dynamic display device I will definitely by pushing for a Dv4/MT4 if it is right for the student.