The installer has changed:
The main change concerned the licence:
The previous version of System Sensor PIC brought improvements that make daily work easier for the user and the caregiver:
To use the new features, install the latest version of the program (and System Sensor EyeControl, if you use eye control).
System Sensor PIC is a communication program based on virtual boards and cards. It lets you build personalized sets of messages for non-speaking people or people with limited movement. Everything works with sensors (touch, proximity, air, switch), head movement (System Sensor Mysz (head mouse)) and eye control (Tobii 4C/5).
Cards can be selected with: a sensor, a switch, a breath sensor, automatic scanning, head movement or eye tracking (Tobii).
To practice precision and focus there are training boards: Tobii mode (eye movement) and System Sensor Mysz (head movement).
More: System Sensor training boards.
Program details: System Sensor PIC and System Sensor Y.
Below you will find the most important screens of System Sensor PIC together with System Sensor EyeControl, the program that lets you control the computer with your eyes (the Tobii Eye Tracker 4C and Tobii 5 cameras). Each step shows what you see on the screen and what to do. You do most of these things only once - at the first start. Click a picture to enlarge it.
⚠️ Two control modes - choose the right one
System Sensor PIC works in one of two modes:
You switch the mode with a single small box in the Settings window - described in Step 6. If the user works with a sensor, you can skip steps 2-5 (calibration) and go straight to step 6.
When you turn the computer on, the System Sensor EyeControl window appears. A green dot next to the camera name (for example "Tobii Eye Tracker 5 - active") means the device is ready to work.
The four large buttons mean:
At the first start the program shows the Calibration screen (Polish: "Kalibracja"). Sit comfortably in front of the monitor, at a distance of 50-70 cm.
Keep your head still and move only your eyes. When you are ready, look at the dots that appear one after another on the screen.
To cancel, press the ESC key.
A single dot appears on a black screen. Rest your eyes on it for a moment. When the program reads it, the next one appears - in a different place.
Just look naturally, without straining. The whole process takes about fifteen seconds or so.
After calibration the program checks how precisely it hits the spot you are looking at. Look at each of the five circles one by one - a circle you hit turns green.
At the bottom of the screen there is a progress counter (for example "Passed: 3 / 5").
The program shows a score from 0 to 100 points. A green frame and the words "Excellent fine-tuning" mean the cursor will land very precisely (average error about 1.5 cm on a typical monitor).
There are two buttons to choose from:
Click the picture to enlarge it. Window version: v23.22.4.26 (2026-04-22).
You open the Settings window with the Settings card on the main board (in the bottom right corner) or with a keyboard shortcut. It has four sections and a row of buttons at the bottom.
Preview of the three color themes (shown on the "Settings" board in the program):
Default (blue)
Black
Light
You change the theme in the "Color theme" field (Polish: "Motyw kolorystyczny") on the drop-down list. The change works right away - no need to restart the program. How to choose? Start with the Default (blue) one; if the user squints or gets tired easily in a bright room, choose Black; if the cards look "washed out" in strong light from the window, choose Light.
⚠️ THE MOST IMPORTANT SWITCH - the control mode
Below the three settings above, on the right side, there is a small box (checkbox) with a long description:
"When it is checked, scanning is on; when it is unchecked, eye control is on."
The rule: when the user works the communicator with a sensor (touch, breath, finger, foot, chin), check this box. When with their eyes, leave it empty.
Above the section there is a note: "A new board will be empty after you add it."
Under the section heading: "Entries in the registry at HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run - no administrator rights needed." (you do not have to do anything by hand - the checkboxes change that part of the registry themselves).
Recommendation for eye control: check all three boxes. Recommendation for sensor control: check only the first one (PIC at startup) - EyeControl is not needed then.
Shows which program (firmware) is loaded in the control unit: the model, the version and whether it is up to date - the program compares it by itself with the newest version on our server.
This section appears only when the new Mysz-USB1286 control unit with program v1.03 or newer is connected - only that one can do it. With other control units the section is not shown at all.
Teaching a remote means 28 buttons, so it takes a long time. With this function you teach one control unit, save its buttons to a file and program every next one by loading that file - in a dozen seconds. The file is also a backup of the client's settings: when a control unit has to be replaced, loading the file brings all the buttons back.
The main board is the first screen for the person using the communicator. It has two parts:
Every card speaks a message in the synthesized voice or opens another board (for example the full alphabet or a list of body parts that hurt).
System Sensor PIC lets the caregiver build their own boards and their own cards - matched to one person's needs, for example with photos of family, favorite meals or medical messages. Below we show what the editor looks like.
The Board editing window (Polish: "Edycja tablic") shows every board in the system.
Every card on a board has two sides of settings:
The most common setup: title + image + "Say text" ("Powiedz tekst") - and the card speaks, in a synthesized voice, whatever the caregiver typed in.
You can load your own photo - of a family member, a favorite mug or a medicine - and crop the part that will show on the card.
Ready-made icons are in the folder C:\Users\Public\Documents\System Sensor PIC\Grafika.
System Sensor PIC comes with 10 ready-made keyboards you can use for writing right away. All of them are built for the Polish language - the letters include the Polish characters ą ć ę ł ń ó ś ź ż. Each one is optimized for different needs - the Polish alphabet, a frequency layout, compact "3 letters per button" keyboards, special characters, a numeric one or an extended keyboard with full text editing. And of course anyone can build their own keyboard to fit individual needs - with any letter layout, colors and field size.
Tip: click through all the models and decide for yourself which keyboard suits the person you are building the set for. Click an image to enlarge it.
From the main board the user opens the ABC card and sees the keyboard selection board (Polish: "Tablica wyboru klawiatur"). Each tile leads to a different layout.
You can switch between keyboards quickly while writing - for example start with the Polish alphabet, jump to special characters for a smiley or a bracket, and then go back to the letters.
The full Polish alphabet (Polish: "Klawiatura PL alfabet") with the diacritics (ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, ż) in natural a-z order. The simplest layout for people who are still learning the alphabet.
The function fields are at the bottom: space, Caps Lock, Delete character ("Kasuj znak") and Keyboards ("Klawiatury" - back to the selection board).
A version of the alphabet with the Polish characters set apart in their own bottom row (Polish: "Klawiatura ABC"). The first three rows hold only the basic Latin letters - so writing Polish without the extra characters is faster, and the Polish letters are still at hand when needed.
Useful for people who write mixed text (Polish plus foreign names, an e-mail address, a link).
The letters are arranged by how often they occur in Polish (Polish: "Klawiatura częstotliwościowa") - the most frequent (i, a, o, e, n, z, r, w) in the top row, the rarest at the bottom.
This layout shortens writing time with scanning a great deal - in automatic mode the most common letters are highlighted first. For experienced users this is often the fastest keyboard.
A compact keyboard with letters grouped in threes (aio, nze, ąćę, trs, wlk...) - Polish: "Klawiatura Pionowo abc". Choosing a group opens a sub-board with the single letters (see the picture below).
A two-step choice is faster than searching the whole alphabet - scanning goes through 4 columns of 4 rows, and after the choice you only have to point at 1 of 3 letters.
This is what the second step looks like on the vertical keyboard. After choosing the aio group the user sees only 3 large, clearly visible letters (a, i, o) and an arrow back to the main keyboard.
The letters really are large - easy to hit with eye control (Tobii), with a head movement or with scanning.
A horizontal keyboard version (Polish: "Tablice abc") - a layout much like the Vertical abc keyboard, but here choosing a group opens a vertical board of letters spread across the whole screen (see the picture below).
The letters on the sub-board take up the full height - good for people whose eye control is less accurate, or who use vertical scanning.
After choosing the trs group on the horizontal keyboard you see 3 huge fields with the letters t, r, s spread vertically across the whole screen.
The biggest possible targets - ideal when the Tobii calibration is imperfect, or in therapy with beginners who are learning to control their gaze and their choices.
The full set of characters that do not fit among the letters, but are needed for full sentences, for an e-mail or a web address: ! ? ( ) [ ] { } < > " ' - + = * / \\ | @ # $ % & ^ ~ §.
It opens with one click from any other keyboard (the Keyboards button), and once the character is inserted you can go straight back to the letters.
A large, clear keyboard with the digits 0-9 and the basic operations (+, -, *, /, =) plus a period and a comma. Polish: "Klawiatura numeryczna".
Useful for a phone number, a date, an amount, an age, or for simple sums as a calculator.
The richest keyboard in the set (Polish: "Klawiatura rozbudowana") - everything on one screen:
Best for people who write longer texts, e-mails, notes - every function they need is at hand, with no keyboard switching.
The opposite of the Extended one (Polish: "Klawiatura Prosta") - here you get the absolute minimum: only the a-z alphabet without the Polish characters and five functions: Delete character, Delete all, Space, Caps Lock, Keyboards. No digits, no punctuation, no groups.
This is exactly the kind of board that caregivers often make themselves on a piece of card, pointing a finger at one letter after another and building words together with the person. System Sensor PIC gives the same simplicity - only on screen, and with a spoken voice after each letter.
Ideal for a start - for a child learning the alphabet, for someone who wants to move quickly from a paper board to a computer, or when what matters is the largest, clearest fields possible with nothing to distract.
Since the latest update System Sensor PIC (and System Sensor Y too) supports a full Caps Lock on the on-screen keyboards. It works just like the physical key on an ordinary Windows keyboard and has three states, which you switch between by clicking the Caps Lock field again and again:
The color of the Caps Lock field tells you at once which mode you are in - there is no state to keep in your head, which is a big help for someone still learning to communicate.
1. Off (gray) - lower-case letters
2. Shift (green) - one capital letter
3. Locked (red) - all CAPITALS
In the Card editing window you open the Program action list (Polish: "Akcja programu") and right at the bottom - next to actions like Maximize program window, Turn on the on-screen keyboard, Dictionary or Open EyeControl - you will find the new Caps Lock entry.
Choosing this action makes the card take over the three Caps Lock states and change its own color (gray → green → red) to match the keyboard's current mode.
This is what a finished Caps Lock card looks like once it is set up: Title set to Caps Lock, Image taken from the default icon (ABC with a pencil) and Program action set to Caps Lock.
You can repeat the same steps on any keyboard of your own - if you are building a keyboard for a person with ALS, just add a field with the Caps Lock action and you have full support for capital letters. How to edit boards - we described that in the Personalization section above.
You can build your own keyboard
Each of the 10 keyboards is simply a board in the editor - the same kind as the message boards. You can copy it, change the letter layout, the colors, the field size, add your own actions (for example "Say text" or "Open another keyboard"). That is how you build a keyboard that fits the person perfectly - their eyesight, their movement and their pace.
How to edit a board - we described that in the Personalization section above.
Below is the full gallery of 39 screens from System Sensor PIC and System Sensor EyeControl - boards, settings windows, Tobii calibration, card editing, personalization. Click any picture to enlarge it. The views shown may not fully reflect the current interface layout, because the communicator keeps evolving and gaining new features.
