Wireless Image Transfer


The Eye-Fi card is an incredible piece of hardware that combines flash storage with an 802.11 wireless interface. This magically transforms your camera into a wireless imaging device that can automatically send captured image files to your PC. When you order an Eye-Fi card it comes with great software ("The Eye-Fi Center") that is installed on your PC and plenty of documentation for how to do setup and configuration.

Once you've installed the Eye-Fi Center, using your Eye-Fi card with SnapVision is really simple. During installation, the Eye-Fi center will ask you to specify a transfer directory on your PC. A typical choice would be \users\username\My Pictures\EyeFi. Whatever transfer directory you chose when configuring The Eye-Fi Center also needs to be set in SnapVision. To configure the Eye-Fi transfer directory, just go to the File->Wireless Capture... dialog and set it to the same directory you used in The Eye-Fi Center. In the future any Eye-Fi transferred images will be automatically opened and processed by Snapvision. Here's a step-by-step basic guide on how to use SnapVision with a camera and Eye-Fi card:

  1. Turn on your PC - wait for the "SnapVision Ready" audio message - press the Esc key to start.
  2. Turn on your camera.
  3. Point your camera at a document - take a picture - the image is sent to your PC through the wireless interface, automatically processed by SnapVision and you'll hear the text audio output in your headset.
  4. Use the F1 key to pause/resume Text To Speech audio output.
  5. Use the F7 key to close SnapVision, and optionally turn off your PC.
Unlike either scanners or document cameras, Wireless Image Transfer doesn't have a lot of memory overhead. This is especially true if you enable the "Delete Image after OCR" button in the Accessibility... dialog. This low memory overhead will allow you to use this mode with low cost (about $249) 1 GB Netbooks that only have 100-200 MB of available RAM.

You also don't need an expensive high-end DSLR camera to get good results. If you shop carefully at a store like Walmart, you can purchase a 12.0 MP or greater point-and-click camera plus an Eye-Fi card together for under $120.