Oberon International's Omni-Reader
Audio Engineers announce a revolution in taking words from page to your computer
When you think of data entry, (when you desperately need to) you usually conjure up memories of hours spent laboriously typing information into an Excel spreadsheet or a telnet terminal. What? Only me?!? Those are hours I’ll never get back.
Anyway…my point is data entry has been a pain in the rear since the keyboard's introduction. Since then, there have been many attempts make data entry easier and quicker. Today’s product is one of those tools.
When I first started researching this product, I was under the impression that it was created by Audio Engineers. It turns out that the Omni-Reader was produced by Oberon International and distributed by Audio Engineers. Oberon was founded in September 1992 and was dissolved in February 2011. That’s all I could find. I did find another Oberon International, a marine engineering firm out of Bangladesh. Doubt they’re related.
According to the Australian Securities and Investment Commission, Audio Engineers PTY LTD was registered on October 28th, 1948, and was deregistered on July 3rd, 1997. During its 76 years, Audio Engineers distributed radios, amplifiers, and other electronics.
I was able to find two mentions of the Omni-Reader in Australian computer magazines. The first was in the October 1985 issue of Your Computer. Frank Lee wrote an in-depth review of the device. Here are a few highlights:
Oberon International’s Omni-Reader is a first entrant into low-cost OCR technology, aimed at the high-volume microcomputer market. The recommended retail price of $1920 is about an order of magnitude smaller than other commercial readers. Mind you, those readers go like a bullet, read pages automatically, and can handle a wide range of materials in a variety of print qualities. The Omni-Reader can't quite do all this, but it’s a step in the right direction. It has the potential to make many microcomputer users reconsider OCR as a viable proposition. Just think — all those magazine listings of program printouts; wouldn't it be nice to be able to read them directly into your machine?
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My interest in the Omni-Reader was kindled when a friend became involved in a direct mailing exercise. He had contrived to obtain a hard copy listing of his victims’ names and addresses, which he intended to have typed up using a database system so that labels could be printed as required. The typing operation was horrendous; there were thousands of names. However, the print quality wasn’t too bad. It had been generated on an IBM impact chain printer of unknown vintage, but with a well formed sans-serif typeface using ten characters per inch. The folk at Audio Engineers felt there was a good chance the Omni-Reader might cope with the job.
The Omni-Reader duly arrived in a large, expansively illustrated cardboard box. There emerged a deceptively simple looking flat-bed page holder with a hinged system holding the sliding read head (see illustration). Being technologically uncouth, | ignored the intimidating documentation, and fitted together everything which could fit into anything. By the time I'd finished, there was a separate power supply hooked between the mains power and the reader, the sliding read head was plugged into the socket at the rear of the paper holder, and my IBM PC-compatible serial port was connected to the reader's serial port using the cable normally reserved for my modem.
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Alas, even with POORCOPY, the reader wouldn't so much as sniff at the name and address lists. Each time we tried to scan a line, there would be a delay of a few seconds, then a beep-beep signalling its unhappiness with the text. This happened even with good-quality photocopies which increased the contrast. We discovered the Omni-Reader also gets upset if the text is proportionally spaced, or if not printed with a carbon ribbon.
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I tried the unit on a typical 124-word business letter that had been typed on a good quality daisywheel printer. It took me 130 seconds to scan the document, giving a total equivalent of 57 words per minute. While this isn’t as good as many professional typists, it leaves my rate for dead. Perhaps my speed would improve with practice. On the other hand, there were three errors undetected by the reader, and their correction added significantly to the overall processing time.
For each line scanned, there was a processing pause of about three seconds, making a total of 4.5 seconds to scan and process a typical line of text. Another problem was the tendency of the text material to slip from the adhesive strips, requiring frequent realignment while reading.
For a situation where the required data has been printed with a letter-quality printer, and if the data is not also available in machine readable format, the OmniReader should be considered as an alternative to direct typing. However, the machine is not a workhorse. The read head and rule mechanism must be treated with respect, and might not stand up to the rigours of full-time work in an office environment. The Omni-Reader should probably be regarded as a tool for reading the occasional material which would otherwise be a pain in the neck to have retyped.
On the other hand, if Oberon were to come good with a downloadable typeface for the IBM 1403 line printer, then I would certainly reconsider its use for the mailing list job.
Australian Personal Computer mentioned the Omni-Reader in their 1986 Business Survival Guide. Keven Bergin wrote an article looking at non-traditional data entry methods. Under “Optical character readers”, Bergin had his to say about it:
One such OCR, the Omni-Reader, has a standard external power supply and uses a standard RS232 interface (the standard IBM modem cable works fine with the Omni-Reader).
The protocol and pitch are set with a combination of the two banks of dip switches. Text is read from the page by moving the read head over one line at a time. The Omni-Reader checks the input and reports any errors.
The read time is between one and three seconds, which will accommododate most hands. There is a numeric mode to allow fast entry of numeric data.
The data can be captured on a PC, or other micros, by putting the output directly to a file, or inside applications like word processors and spreadsheets, where interfacing software is available. The Omni-Reader is distributed by Audio Engineers, (Telephone (02) 29 6731) and sells for $ 1 500.
Have you ever used an Omni-Reader? Do you know anything about its history? Tell us about it in the comments below.
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