CANADIANS: I invented a wireless relay service. Help me commercialize!

So why can't one cell phone have a voice portion with a data input to receive the captioned text?

Where did you see this "Class A" and "Class B" stuff?
 
I know people in the industry. It's a little known FCC rules known by every cellphone manufacturer. If you have worked on an engineering job with them, you'd know. Another way to find engineers (the actual people who builds cellphones), can sometimes visit places like HowardForums at http://www.HowardForums.com ... but such people are hard to find.

A voice portion with a data input would become a Class A device if it was used on the current 2nd generation cellphone networks. And FCC Class A devices are illegal in the public, outside of an industrial environment, because of radio interference issues...

If you have an engineering degree in university, read more about FCC Class A/B:
Google Search: Explanation of FCC Class A/B
Google Search: More FCC Class A/B Info
As you can see, this is very complicated...

Anyway, this will change in the future, but be prepared to wait half a decade...

Keep an eye on WiMax. Amazing things will show up by the end of this decade, including wireless VRS in a handheld device :D

(Yep! You heard me right! Actually, you can already do wireless VRS today using a laptop computer with a video camera, at a Wifi hotspot, but that's kind of "cheating" because a laptop is too big, and you can't use it everywhere like a Sidekick, WiFi doesn't go everywhere like cellphone airwaves which Sidekick/BlackBerry uses)
 
Home Entertainment Center

Hi Mark,

I have checked out the site at www.marky.com I was overly impressed with the home entertainment center u setup! I would love to have mine setup like that. What is more cost effective to setup something similiar to yours? I know a real 42 inches TV would be a gastly $5k or more! Suggestion? Let me know when u have the chance.

Thank you,
Vincent Lagrotteria
 
Steelers:

For the cheapest high-quality 80 to 100 inch picture for home theater, get a projector. Not a TV set, but a "digital projector" unit. Projectors are now cheaper than big HDTV's.

Get a screen:
$0 -- Find a big enough white wall in your house
or $50 -- High quality movie-projector-wall paint
or $400 -- Buy a good movie-quality projection screen [BETTER]

Get a digital projector:
$800 -- Entry level digital/computer/TV projector with HDTV inputs, 800x600 DLP
or $1500 -- Digital/computer/TV projector with HDTV inputs, 1024x768 DLP
or $3000 -- A higher-resolution high-quality widescreen DLP [BETTER]

Get a good DVD player:
$150 -- Good brand of progressive scan DVD player

Get a good deaf-friendly sound system:
$200 -- Amplifier for bass shaker
$100 -- Cheap bass shaker purchased from eBay
or $400 -- Real Sofa-SHAKING bass shaker from http://www.thebuttkicker.com
or $HIGHER -- (If you are rich and want a MOTION SIMULATOR for your sofa, try www.d-box.com ... If you have to ask for the price, you can't afford it... I can't afford it!)

Get a good blinds for your windows in your "theater" room
$0 -- Use your existing windowless basement;
or $100 -- Fully opaque light-blocking velvet drapes
or $500+ -- Special ornamental light blocking blinds for windows

You can spend as little as $2500 nowadays if you shop carefully, and you'll have a 100% fully captioned movie theater AT YOUR HOME with a sharper and better picture than the local movie theaters! (Must get a good quality screen)

If you are on a budget, for 80" to 100" wall-size video, you can spend as little as $1000 for just the projector and a good player alone! And get a mammoth 80 to 100 inch picture for just $1000 that looks great -- can be used for HDTV -- can be used for keyboard interpretor notetaking -- can be used for TV -- Can be used for DVD -- can be used for computer -- can be used for digital photo slideshows -- Can even display PAL, NTSC, SECAM, HDTV, COMPUTER, XBOX, PLAYSTATION, etc. These newer "digital projectors" can display pratically EVERYTHING nowadays!

Sometimes the cheapest "digital projectors" are at office supplies stores, but they are home theater treasures in a little box nowadays if you hook them up to DVD, computers, and game systems nowadays. The image quality is much better nowadays.
 
Last edited:
About Shakers....

It is quite cool about Home theatre.

Yes, I know the buttkicker I purchased it , like it but it is very limited because you need a good receiver to connect it for extra inputs like game consoles, TV, stereo etc and the sound is not good or you need to configure it.

Do you know about THUNDERBOX 3D Noiseless Sound System?

It mades in Spain and there is a distribuitor of this in Canada (Calgary, AB) and the website is www.zoundstech.com. It is a bit expensive (about $cdn 2000). That system is all one (hi-fi receiver and amplifier), has 6 inputs (1 mono!) RCA and outputs for speakers(2 front, 2 rear), subwoofer and 4 shakers too! (up to 4 and you don't need an amplifier for that). It has already everything. Also I puchased it and WOW! Believe me! the Quality of Sound is SUPERB! and throw my old Home Theatre Receiver (JVC RX-7030C).

Gaming videos, watching movies and TV!!!, music, etc...

Oh! yes. there is a video from Spain of Spaniard Deaf that show it (sorry it is in LSE (Spanish Sign Language) but it is quite to understand. Watch it:

http://www.zoundstech.com/spainvideo1.wmv

By the way the owners of the company Zound Tech Inc that sell those are deaf too.

Now I am very happy with that and everyday use it watching any channels like CSI, CNN!! (it has good bass!), etc...

Chau!
 
It's been many years since this thread has been posted.
I'm replying to say that I currently use this service on BlackBerries using both MobileSSH and midpssh.

Since I use a Vonage Canada line, their Canadian 711 provider was selected to be the New Jersey relay service instead of Bell Canada, but it's relay service indepenent, and I can actually dial any TDD number.

More technical information:
That said, this can be adapted to an "IP-RELAY" platform, using WEB 2.0 and AJAX technologies (similiar to what the big sites such as Sprint Relay Online has done). Also, a pool of SIP-based IP modems running G.711 protocol running a telephony stack, can operate TDD tones directly from a data center using standard server blades with NO TDD's (using 100% software emulated TTY's running over VoIP), and would work with any relay provider that the specific VoIP line was able to access. It may require Bell Canada VoIP lines, or any VoIP provider that uses Bell Canada Relay as their 711 provider. Software-TTY-over-VoIP (100% softphone, no modem, no tty!) is already being done in someone else's program called called PCTTY (PCTTY -- A TTY for Window's PCs) so it can be done nowadays. This is the only other way Canadians can do an "IP-RELAY-LIKE" service in Canada at the moment, and PCTTY is too complex for many Canadians, especially since most deaf do not know how to set up a VoIP softphone and run a 100% software TTY over a VoIP softphone.... It works but not as user-friendly as just typing www.sprintrelayonline.com or similiar sites...

That said, in the long term, if there was ever a way to pay Bell Canada (or another Canadian relay provider) for direct IP-Relay access over TCP/IP to bypass having to use a software TTY pool to call Bell Canada lines, then it could be a niche subscriber-funded service, which may be useful until Canada finally subsidizes improved relay services similiar to those already available in the U.S. ten years ago (some Canadian funding mechanism similiar to the U.S. Telecommunications Relay Fund would be needed to make the service free).

We Canadians have invented the BlackBerry, but I am the only Canadian using Bell Canada Relay (and other Canadian relay services) on a BlackBerry thumb keyboard (without an attached external TTY)! While in America BlackBerry IP-Relay is widespread! That does not make sense.
 
Hi Mark,

It would be interesting to make your code open source so other programmers can use it. It would be not free, but this way you can make some money until you can find a way to commercialize it.

I used Bell Canada Relay Service and other service providers. Now because of the economic shutdown, I had to cut my phone line and that leaves me with my cell phone. I have 40 minutes included in my monthly invoice and I cannot use them because I cannot even use my TTY with my cell phone even if it was rated as a TTY device. Using your software would save a lot of time.

If you make it open source, it's a way. You can even sell it or use like a trial period.

On the other side, even if you wrote a lot of documentation on this, maybe for some people it would be hard to set it up, but for someone like me that has good programming skills, it won't be hard :)

Let me know what you think,

cheers

Marius
 
My software is 90% server based. So it is not as simple as "can I have a copy?"

It's basically server running TDD's remotely. Right now, I've only upgraded the server to handle 2 simultaneous calls. Someone needs to pony up a few thousand dollars for the infrastructure. (some virtual servers and a pool of TTY's running on VoIP, plus some software developer time, is all I need).

If someone has investment money, Canadian government money, grant money, or donation money (5 figures), I'd be happy to discuss options of making this system available Canada-wide -- programmer time is needed, equipment is needed (or virtual servers), data centre space might be needed (if physical phone lines are used), lots of phone lines (physical or VoIP), lots of TDD/TTY's (or licensing proper software, such as TTY-o-IP codecs for G.711 VoIP lines and gluing it all together into a cohesive software package that includes a billing system and a registration system that is open to Canada's entire deaf population). I am a software developer -- See http://www.marky.com/resume -- so I could pull off doing most of the work, depending on the scope defined.

If you're knowledgeable about computers, there's a quick-and-dirty open source method, do-it-yourself:
1. Get an Ultratec Intelemodem from ultratec.com ($300+)
2. Set up a Linux box at home. Get a telnet/ssh daemon running on it. Connect TDD modem to it.
3. Get dyndns pointing to it, unless you got a static IP address.
4. telnet/ssh into your Linux box from your cellphone (there's BlackBerry and iPhone clients)
5. Run a Linux terminal such as Kermit or Minicom.
6. You've got crude TDD/TTY on your cellphone's screen (without needing to connect a big bulky separate TDD/TTY!). Type "ATDT711" to get your local relay service.

Note: You can skip step 1 if you just only use relay services which often support PC modems, but Bell Canada Relay service is very unreliable with PC modems (frequent disconnects). If you hate 45 baud, then you may need to configure your modem to connect at only 300 baud E71 (Local Echo on) as most relay services only run at 45 or 300 baud, for TDD's and PC modem's, respectively.

Obviously, not as user-friendly as my system, and not as easy as typing "http://www.i711.com" that Americans have the luxury of doing, but that's the Open Source method (no programming needed!)

Until then, I've been enjoying the exclusive use of my software for the last 8 years now...
 
TTY and cellphone in one would be nice and able to see the type-on-go communicate than rather wait by IM or text by time and time.
 
Back
Top