Tone Deafness

Rob Gaddi wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Aug 2013 17:24:54 -0500
> Tim Wescott<tim@seemywebsite.really>  wrote:
>
>> Like a good percentage of human males, I'm partially color blind to green
>> and red.  In my case, it's enough that I can't tell the difference
>> between a green or a red LED -- so a piece of equipment that depends on
>> the operator being able to see the color of a bi-color LED is totally
>> useless to me.
>>
>> Needless to say, this is irritating.
>>
>> Does anyone on the group know how many people are really, truly tone
>> deaf?  I don't just mean unable to hear when they're playing out of tune,
>> but people who are unable to tell the difference between a "beep" and a
>> "boop" when it's coming out of a piece of electronic equipment?
>>
>> I'm thinking of communicating status via a beeper, and for obvious
>> reasons I don't want to do the same "bicolor LED" crap to someone, only
>> with sound.
>>
>> --
>>
>> Tim Wescott
>> Wescott Design Services
>> http://www.wescottdesign.com
>>
>
> I can't imagine how that could be the case for anyone that wasn't
> completely deaf.  Not being able to tell an A from a C is one thing,
> but it seems like if you couldn't resolve octave differences you
> wouldn't be able to understand English, let alone a tonal language like
> Mandarin.
>
> Ears are just simpler hardware.
>
   Lien hao

On 14/08/13 23:24, Tim Wescott wrote:
> Does anyone on the group know how many people are really, truly tone
> deaf?  I don't just mean unable to hear when they're playing out of tune,
> but people who are unable to tell the difference between a "beep" and a
> "boop" when it's coming out of a piece of electronic equipment?
>
> I'm thinking of communicating status via a beeper, and for obvious
> reasons I don't want to do the same "bicolor LED" crap to someone, only
> with sound.

Don't forget a significant number of people are deaf
and/or have tinnitus.  Depending on the for their
deafness takes, they might not even hear some or all
of the noises, let alone distinguish them.

And most people become quite adept at ignoring sounds
that they hear too often, particularly when they are
concentrating on something else.

Whether or not any of that matters largely depends on
the consequences of missing some of the sounds.

Tim Wescott <tim@seemywebsite.really> writes:
> I'm partially color blind ... can't tell the difference between a
> green or a red LED ... Needless to say, this is irritating.

If it's just for bench equipment, could you keep a red or green filter
(colored cellophane or whatever) handy?  Then just hold the filter in
front of the LED to check the LED color.  Red cellophane will make a
green LED look dim while not significantly decreasing the apparent
brightness of a red LED, and vice versa.

On 8/14/2013 5:24 PM, Tim Wescott wrote:
> Like a good percentage of human males, I'm partially color blind to green
> and red.  In my case, it's enough that I can't tell the difference
> between a green or a red LED

That is not too bad. Many people can't tell left from right.

> I'm thinking of communicating status via a beeper, and for obvious
> reasons I don't want to do the same "bicolor LED" crap to someone, only
> with sound.

Toggle LEDs with different duty cycle. It is easy to distinguish 2 - 3 
basic flash patterns.


Vladimir Vassilevsky
DSP and Mixed Signal Designs
www.abvolt.com

On Wed, 14 Aug 2013 17:24:54 -0500, Tim Wescott
<tim@seemywebsite.really> wrote:

>Like a good percentage of human males, I'm partially color blind to green 
>and red.  In my case, it's enough that I can't tell the difference 
>between a green or a red LED -- so a piece of equipment that depends on 
>the operator being able to see the color of a bi-color LED is totally 
>useless to me.
>
>Needless to say, this is irritating.
>
>Does anyone on the group know how many people are really, truly tone 
>deaf?  I don't just mean unable to hear when they're playing out of tune, 
>but people who are unable to tell the difference between a "beep" and a 
>"boop" when it's coming out of a piece of electronic equipment?
>
>I'm thinking of communicating status via a beeper, and for obvious 
>reasons I don't want to do the same "bicolor LED" crap to someone, only 
>with sound.


As an obvious an easy to implement solution, why not go to yellow/blue
LEDs?  Almost anyone except the very rare individuals with total color
blindness, will be able to distinguish those, including almost all
cases of partial color blindness.  Yes, those are relatively expensive
(about twice the cost of red/green bi-color LEDs), but would likely be
a near plug-in solution.

In the case of audio, mix different frequencies with different pulse
rates.  IOW, BeepBeepBeep vs. Boop...Boop...Boop vs. Tic..Tic..Tic.

While there are people who cannot hear certain frequency bands, that's
usually the result of some sort of trauma or exposure to very loud
noises.  A complete inability to distinguish tones would make them
unable to understand speech as well.

"Paul Rubin" <no.email@nospam.invalid> wrote in message 
news:7xeh9vagi5.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com...
> Tim Wescott <tim@seemywebsite.really> writes:
>> I'm partially color blind ... can't tell the difference between a
>> green or a red LED ... Needless to say, this is irritating.
>
> If it's just for bench equipment, could you keep a red or green filter
> (colored cellophane or whatever) handy?  Then just hold the filter in
> front of the LED to check the LED color.  Red cellophane will make a
> green LED look dim while not significantly decreasing the apparent
> brightness of a red LED, and vice versa.

http://wearecolorblind.com/article/oxy-iso-glasses-review/

Of course, some colored film or 'gels' would be much cheaper and just as 
handy.

Guessing you want glasses that null the offending colors -- purple absorbs 
green, making green look black (in the most common red-green 
colorblindness).  Presumably, cyan would also work (complement of red, 
making red look black instead -- so don't mix up your cyan and purple 
'shades!).  It follows, you want the complementary color for whichever 
type of colorblindness you have; the other kinds, being rarer, presumably 
have rather expensive glasses for them, making the cheap solution all the 
more handy.

Tim

-- 
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk.
Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com 

"Vladimir Vassilevsky" <nospam@nowhere.com> wrote in message 
news:vrydnd0sWITYo5HPnZ2dnUVZ5r2dnZ2d@giganews.com...
>> Like a good percentage of human males, I'm partially color blind to 
>> green
>> and red.  In my case, it's enough that I can't tell the difference
>> between a green or a red LED
>
> That is not too bad. Many people can't tell left from right.

I can do you one better.  One time while driving with my girlfriend (at 
the time), she attempted to provide directions:
[points to the right] "go yellow!"
"I mean, left!"
"I mean, RIGHT!"

I didn't let her live that one down...

> Toggle LEDs with different duty cycle. It is easy to distinguish 2 - 3 
> basic flash patterns.

Speaking of cars, most have a diagnostic mode (enabled by jumpering the 
diagnostic plug, or doing a magical dance, e.g., toggling ignition five 
times) which blinks out diagnostic information.  Newer cars (i.e., since 
the 90s) of course have various numeric, alphanumeric or graphical 
displays in them, but older ones often used the "check engine" light.  My 
'95 Toyota, for example, blinks out unary sequences:
- a blink is something like 0.2 seconds ON, 0.8 seconds OFF
- a series of blinks in a row is a digit (i.e., count the pulses, 1 
through 9 -- not BCD, but UCD -- unary coded decimal)
- An extra second between blinks indicates the second digit (thus 
expressing numbers 11-99 except whole multiples of 10, since there's no 
zero)
- Two seconds delay indicates another pair of digits (if multiple error 
codes are present)
- Five seconds delay and the sequence repeats

I probably have the exact times wrong, but the grouped pattern is clear 
and pretty handy.  Unary gets tiresome after a while, so if you need 
status faster than it blinks, you'll need a different method.

Tim

-- 
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk.
Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com 

On a sunny day (Wed, 14 Aug 2013 17:24:54 -0500) it happened Tim Wescott
<tim@seemywebsite.really> wrote in
<WPGdneG5cYUrnpHPnZ2dnUVZ5ugAAAAA@giganews.com>:

>Like a good percentage of human males, I'm partially color blind to green 
>and red.  In my case, it's enough that I can't tell the difference 
>between a green or a red LED -- so a piece of equipment that depends on 
>the operator being able to see the color of a bi-color LED is totally 
>useless to me.
>
>Needless to say, this is irritating.
>
>Does anyone on the group know how many people are really, truly tone 
>deaf?  I don't just mean unable to hear when they're playing out of tune, 
>but people who are unable to tell the difference between a "beep" and a 
>"boop" when it's coming out of a piece of electronic equipment?
>
>I'm thinking of communicating status via a beeper, and for obvious 
>reasons I don't want to do the same "bicolor LED" crap to someone, only 
>with sound.

I dunno, but I do remember a collegue of mine confessing he was color blind.
He was the engineer responsible for running a color TV studio...
I have wondered many times how he got away with that..

Maybe it is the sickness of this society to accomodate for every freaking disability
and that way make life more difficult for 99.99 percent of people.

What you want is a color translater, that sees the color (simple to make),
and says RED RED RED  or GREEN GREEN GREEN , or : duck.
whatever.
Design opportunity.

My only problem with all that stuff is: too many menus'.
Gimme a command line.

My putah speaks English.
If I say:
show BBC2 
it pops up BBC2 (if enabled).
I can type it too.

On a sunny day (Thu, 15 Aug 2013 00:13:48 +0100) it happened Syd Rumpo
<usenet@nononono.co.uk> wrote in <kuh2uf$9p5$1@dont-email.me>:


>Fortunately, I'm not tone deaf, but it's hard to understand how anyone 
>couldn't tell the large difference between two consecutive notes.

You never listened to heavy metal of course.

Hi Syd,

On 8/14/2013 4:13 PM, Syd Rumpo wrote:

> I'm working with a USB thingy at the moment, trying to interface to some
> comms gear through a PC.  It goes hi-lo (be-dop) when I unplug it, and
> lo-hi (bo-dip) when I plug it in.
>
> Fortunately, I'm not tone deaf, but it's hard to understand how anyone
> couldn't tell the large difference between two consecutive notes.

Depends on what you mean by  "consecutive".

I.e., if they occur adjacent to each other in *time*, you still
have to be able to resolve the difference in pitch/frequency
to differentiate them.

E.g., if the two notes differ by a semitone, you or I can indicate
hi-lo vs. lo-hi.  But, this may not be possible for all "listeners".

And, if the "tune" contains more than two notes and/or rhythm,
most people have to subvocalize it to "remember" it long enough
to consult a chart (that explains what each "tune" means).  In
a sense, "sing" (hum) it to themselves, repeatedly, while
*visually* scanning a chart that says:

ding...dong.dong     error 93
ding.ding.ding       error 27
ding...dong...dong   error 15

etc.

(Try it and notice how *you* remember the annunciator while
attempting to look it up!  Then, have one of your friends
listen to it and try to convey that information to you
"over the phone".  Or, in an email...)

You want to choose "indications" that are sufficiently different
to maximize the chance of differentiating between them.  E.g.,
perhaps 6-12 semitones apart; durations that vary by a factor of
2 or 3, etc.  And, keep the number of "events" (indications?)
small so the user can hold the entire sequence in his/her short
term memory while trying to write it down, look it up, explain
it to someone else, etc.

The same holds for audible, visual, haptic, etc. interfaces.
(you often have to resort to combinations of each of these if
you want to design inclusively)

Or, just hope everyone that interacts with your product has 100%
sensory capabilities!  :>  (and be chagrined when you discover
just how many people are "impaired" in various ways -- and, how
*an* impairment can often be just "one of several")

~0.5% legally blind in the US (1.5M)
~8% of men are colorblind (doesn't affect women as much!)
~5% of 50+ have essential tremor
~1% of 60+ suffer from Parkinsonian tremor
~1.5% "deaf" (e.g., 4M in the US)
etc.

And that doesn't address other "physical" impairments, etc.