Lumen

Pick a word with a gesture. Lumen says it aloud.

Lumen is assistive communication software. It watches for one gesture through your camera, steps through a board of words and letters, and speaks whatever you select.

Try Lumen Download for Windows

Works in the browser with a webcam, or as a Windows desktop app.

Illustration of the Lumen board. A highlight steps from button to button. When the gesture is detected, the highlighted button is selected and spoken. Shown faster than the real app.

Communication shouldn’t depend on one way of interacting.

Most communication tools assume you can type, tap a screen, or speak on demand. People move and interact in many different ways, and software should work with that range instead of asking everyone to fit one mold.

Lumen is one more pathway. A single, repeatable gesture is enough to choose a phrase, spell out a message and have it spoken aloud.

How Lumen works

One gesture, repeated. Lumen does the scanning.

  1. Watch

    Your camera feed is checked by a pose-recognition model that knows one gesture and can tell when it’s absent.

  2. Scan

    While there’s no gesture, the highlight moves to the next button. It steps through phrases, letters and controls at a pace you set.

  3. Select

    When the gesture is detected, Lumen selects whichever button is highlighted at that moment.

  4. Speak

    A chosen phrase, or a message built letter by letter, is spoken aloud using your device’s voice.

Each step lasts 5 seconds by default. You can change it to anything from 1 to 10 seconds in Settings.

What’s in Lumen today

  • One gesture runs the board

    Once Lumen is running, every button on the board can be reached with the same gesture. No mouse or keyboard needed.

  • Everyday phrases, ready to use

    Fifteen built-in phrases, including Yes, No, Help, Bathroom, Emergency and I love you.

  • Spell out anything

    The Advanced board groups letters into sets of four to six. Pick a group, pick a letter, then Say the message.

  • Saved phrases

    Save a message you’ve built and it becomes a button on the Saved board. Saved phrases are remembered on that browser or desktop app the next time you open it.

  • Your pace

    Choose how long the highlight stays on each button, from 1 to 10 seconds.

  • Bring your own gesture

    Train a pose model in Google’s Teachable Machine, paste its link into Lumen and load it. Lumen remembers the link.

Try Lumen in your browser

Nothing to install. Open the app, allow camera access when your browser asks, and the board appears once the gesture model has loaded.

Open Lumen

Before you start

  • A webcam. Lumen reads gestures from the camera, so the board won’t load without one.
  • An internet connection. The default gesture model is loaded from Teachable Machine when the app opens.
  • Your permission. The camera request appears only when you open the app, never on this page.
  • Camera images stay in your browser. Lumen analyzes them on your device and doesn’t send them anywhere.
  • If you see “Camera Error”, check that your browser is allowed to use the camera, then reload.

Lumen for Windows

Install Lumen as a desktop app and run it in its own window, without opening a browser tab.

Lumen 2.0.0

Version
2.0.0
Installer
Lumen Setup 2.0.0.exe
Platform
Windows

The download link hasn’t been added to this page yet.

Technology should adapt to people, not force everyone to adapt to it.

That’s the idea Lumen is built around: simple technology can have meaningful human impact.

Brightening Lives and Futures

About the project

Lumen is created and developed by Philipe Pajishvili.

It’s still in development, and version 2.0.0 is the current release. Feedback from people who use it, and from people who build for those who do, shapes what comes next.

Lumen doesn’t diagnose or treat any condition, and it isn’t a substitute for professional support.

How Lumen is built
Gesture recognition
A pose model trained with Google’s Teachable Machine, run in the browser with TensorFlow.js.
Selection method
Single-switch scanning: each button is highlighted in turn, and the gesture acts as the switch.
Interface
p5.js with plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Speech
The browser’s built-in Web Speech API. Lumen picks an English voice when the device has one.
Desktop app
The same board, packaged with Electron for Windows.

Teachable Machine and TensorFlow.js are Google projects. Lumen uses them and isn’t affiliated with or endorsed by Google.

Help shape Lumen.

Lumen is still developing. Your feedback shows what to fix and what to build next.

The feedback link hasn’t been added to this page yet.

Useful feedback includes