[optacon-l] Re: Orbit Research Group & TBG announce project for low cost braille display.
- From: David <trailerdavid@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 04:36:01 +0200
Yep, and do you think I ever did that, just to have the fun of mocking
the Braille cells? Smile. Besides, the plastic film over time got pretty
lousy, and if you pressed too hard with your fingertips while reading,
the pins could actually leave markings in the film. This all made it
quite an interesting guesswork to read the display reliably, after a few
years.
David
On 8/13/2014 4:16 AM, C. Pond wrote:
> Another problem with those good old magnetic dots with their mechanical
> latch is that if one had her hands on the display when it was refreshing,
> the dots would not stay up. They would slightly ping against one's
> fingertips and then settle back down.
>
> Charles
>
> From: David
> Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2014 9:44 PM
> To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [optacon-l] Re: Orbit Research Group & TBG announce project for low
> cost braille display.
>
> First Braille display I ever had the chance of operating long-termed,
> was some kind of a heavy "beast". It took as much space as a fairly
> sized laptop, but was twice the thickness, and twice the weight. Cost
> something like 25000 dollars, and was rather noisy in operation. The
> technology was quite interesting. Each cell was made up of 8 small pins,
> with a magnet at the bottom. Then there was a separate coil for each
> pin. When the coil received an electric pulse, it turns magnetic, hence
> will attract the magnet at the bottom of the pin, lifting it up. When
> the coil has no electric pulse, there is nothing that will attract the
> bottom magnet, and the pin will drop. When you moved line up or down on
> the screen, all the 80 characters of the screen got interpretted into
> Braille dot-patterns, and then the patterns for the whole line was
> transfered to the display. a locking mechanism released all the pins,
> and the pulses were given to the coils that were to raise their pins.
> Then, in a matter of a few fractions of a second, the locking mechanism
> kicked back in, locking all the pins in their new position. To have all
> these 8pins for each of the 80cells, a total of 640pins, working
> smoothly as possible, they needed to runn in tiny tunnels or channels,
> and that had to be as clean as possible. Therefore, a plastic film
> covered the whole Braille line, and the user would have much the same
> reading-experience, as when reading a Braille book printed in plastic
> sheets. But the moving up and down of the 640 pins for every change of
> line, did make a sound that I best can illustrate by asking you to
> quickly moving a coin up and down on the comb you use for your
> hair-styling. Now, imagine the feeling you had in your ears, after
> sitting 8 hours aday, listening to hundreds if not thousands of these
> rattlings. Smile.
>
> The technology was quite common in the early and mid-eighties, for
> producing Braille refreshables. My Braille display for the computer used
> this technology, and so did my three first Braille calculators. Yet,
> this technology had its clear drawbacks. First, it was quite sensitive
> to dirt in the channels for the pins to run. Next, every refreshing of
> the display took quite a moment. An 80cell display, would typically take
> a second or more to update its contents. Thirdly, this technology
> demanded quite a power consumption, meaning that it was not very easy to
> have it run on batteries for a longer periode. And, it was really
> sensitive to mechanical disfunctions. Typically, the cells would only
> last for a couple of years. And that was in the case of leaving the unit
> on a stabil desk. For portable units like my calculators, even small
> bumpings into a door-frame or the like, could cause mechanical trouble.
> The pins were less than a 10th of an inch thick (something like 1.5mm).
> Hence they got easily bended, and no longer moved smoothly up and down,
> when refreshing the display.
>
> Then, imagine the great joy we felt, when in the late 80's we saw the
> first piezo electrical units stream onto the market. These displays,
> have a specially formulated material in its lifters. Whenever there is
> an electric pulse, the lifter will bend. Put a positive pulse on it, and
> it will bend upward; put a negative pulse, and it will bend downward.
> Now put a tiny pin on top of the lifter, and the pin will move up and
> down, depending on the pulses given to the lifter. 8 lifters in each
> cell, and put 20, 30, 40, 60, 80 or any number you want together, and
> woopsy - you''ve got a refreshable modern-day Braille display. All you
> now need, is a bunch of electronic circuits, to control which lifter to
> bend what way at any time, and some extra electronics for the
> communication with the computer, nottaker, cellphone or whatever. Yeh,
> and then of course, you need a casing to put it all nicely into. Smile.
>
> Benefits of the piezo-electrical units, are quite many and obvious. The
> lifters react on quite small pulses, leaving us the chance of running a
> Braille display of today, on batteries for hours. They operate smoothly
> and quietly, and can perform for five or more years, with littel more
> than just normal cleanliness. And, they are quite small, lightweighted
> units, that easily can be brought along. Most cases, they are durable in
> their construction - meaning that you can even drop them on the floor a
> few times, with no real harm done to the cells. Yet, please don't test
> that last point unnecessarily. We even have seen them come down in
> pricing, I guess mostly due to a raised demand for displays.
>
> Yet, they do have a few drawbacks, these modern-day units as well. One
> thing is that the technology is specially designed, and does take some
> special manufacturing. The other thing is, funny ass it may sound to
> most of you, that the fat you naturally have on your fingers, does harm
> the piezo-electrical lifters over time. Even with the best cleanliness
> you can have, the finger-fat will over time cause some corrosion to the
> lifters, and in due time, cause them to slowly "die".
>
> Point in all of this explanation, is that although we have seen much
> improvement in technology, it still holds some drawbacks, and prices
> still live their life along with the birds in the sky. When someone
> promises us, that they all the sudden will be able to drop the price
> down to more like a fifth of the cheapest known product of today's
> market, I do tend to agree in the questioning of the reason for such a
> drop. And I do agree, we have heard this kind of promises way too often.
> Great if they can lower the price, but let's hope they can do so in a
> way that ensures the high quality of existing units. If I had the chance
> to pay only 300 dollars for a unit, but was told that its quality only
> would last for a year or two, I am not fully sure I would find it worth.
> There has been many "good solutions" for helping and assisting us blind
> people in our daily life. Unfortunately, most cases it is either that
> flimsy or tiny that it is useless for normal usage, or it is that clumsy
> heavy and special-designed, that it turns useless again. Cheap flimsy
> stuff we don't want. So I hope they come up with something durable and
> lasting enough, that it will be worth the money.
>
> The other thing of course, would be the actual communication with the
> master unit (computer, cellphone or whatever). It is not enough to put a
> Bluetooth circuit inside, and connect a USB cable on the outside. Some
> kind of a driver or piece of software will be needed, for the unit to
> receive the 20 characters it is supposed to display at any time. You
> need some way of controlling which characters to display, and some way
> of determining the actual representation for each character. Even the
> same character, may have different representations in one language as
> compared to another, when comes to Braille. For instance, in English a
> question-mark, is represented by the dot-pattern of 2, 3 and 6. In
> Scandinavia, the same questionmark is represented by the pattern of dots
> 2 and 6. All of this controlling of the Braille display, usually is done
> by a combination of a driver from the hardware manufacturer, and the
> information stream given out by your screen reader software. Now, if you
> drop a unit on the market, priced five times cheaper than the units sold
> by the screen reader manufacturers themselves, it will be interesting to
> see if the next version of the screen readers will support this cheap
> unit. Then, of course, you could design your own screen reader,
> specially designed for the cheap Braille display - but I am not sure you
> could do so, within the 300 dollar limit. Still, they did not promise us
> anything until early 2016, a year and a half from now. Certainly, they
> have their time to surprise the market.
>
> Nope, guys, I don't want to sound negative, neither do I want to
> discourage good initiatives. Yet, how many times have we been told about
> good ideas of manufacturing cheap and updated versions of things like
> Braille displays, Braille printers, Optacon or whatever. Most cases, the
> ideas are good, and could be realities, had there only been someone to
> make them come true. And, the pricing? It will depend on the call in the
> market. Yet, as I have already stated, and someone else on the list also
> mentioned, the market is at the best quite narrow, and the costs of
> having things distributed often tend to raise the price rapidly. So
> let's wait and see what they come up with. Guess we will hear more about
> the project, as it moves on.
>
>
> David
>
> On 8/13/2014 2:17 AM, Nick Dotson wrote:
>> People have been promising "cheap" refreshable braille since I first
>> encountered mention of solenoid actuators in the literature for Blind and
>> Visually Impaired, before the commercial advent of the Optacon,
>> Digi-Cassette or VersaBraille and their European counterparts. Fine
>> tolerances, the metrics (in the sense of physical characteristics) of the
>> braille cell, drivers requisite for driving these parts used to be the
>> justification of cost. People forgot the underlying realities, not the
>> actual cost of the production models themselves--but the tooling necessary
>> for manufacture of the devices and the cost versus sales requisite to
>> recouping the initial cost of development, prototyping, tooling for
>> manufacture, and costs of setting up distribution and the speed with such
>> a
>> small user-base of potential sales, then, the realities of actual sales.
>> Sure, this drops the cost per unit--if it is possible--and nothing was
>> said
>> regarding the nature of the technologies to be used so that someone could
>> back of the envelope compare with the costs of similar
>> materials/technologies used, but the figure of 10% of blind and visually
>> impaired persons between 18-55 who are braille users is in my experience
>> an
>> exaggeration. Teachers, counselors, rehabilitators, and young blind
>> people
>> fall into the "speech is here available; so, why should I read braille--I
>> can't afford the physical footprint and cost of hard copy, and with
>> reduced
>> revenues--governmental agencies are less willing to purchase current
>> displays--all of which except for the later wouldn't change with a severe
>> drop in the cost of the display. After all, who could make enough to
>> repay
>> the costs of development, manufacture and distribution costs if the user
>> base didn't dramatically increase???
>>
>> Let's face it: societies in developed countries are trending toward morbid
>> obesity, in part a lack of the self-discipline requisite in knowing that
>> some foods are less healthy than others, but they're fast to acquire,
>> relatively inexpensive when placed against the time and effort requisite
>> to
>> preparing more healthy alternatives--in the perspectives of many folks
>> overwhelmed with the job of surviving and getting a living. Similarly,
>> Optacon usage or that of braille takes time, practice, and constant
>> reinforcement to be done with any amount of efficacy... How will that
>> change in the minds of blind persons, who are--products of their society's
>> of origin, as are the educators/trainers of the congenitally and
>> adventitiously blinded?
>>
>> As an "A.D.M.U.P." (Aging Downwardly Mobile Urban Professional), I'm not
>> willing to expend my hopes or dreams, or beer money on such an undertaking
>> until I know allot more about it than the constantly reiterated promises
>> I've heard since the demise of the Optacon, or, the advent of refreshable
>> braille displays since my first Classic Cassette-based VersaBraille, which
>> still works except for the batteries... (grin)
>>
>> I still have the cassette books I bought for it, the display is still
>> beautiful despite 7 years of hard use as a portable note taker in Rural
>> Northwest FL, and around the US and Canada, even though working for a
>> company who was the nemesis of TSI, and it is a comfort to use it for
>> everything except the speller or was it a dictionary--when I'm feeling
>> nostalgic for the glories of my youth as a pioneer in the field of
>> computer-based adaptive technology...
>>
>> I hope; but not very hard or very much...
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> [mailto:optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
>> On Behalf Of David
>> Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2014 2:31 PM
>> To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: [optacon-l] Re: Orbit Research Group & TBG announce project for
>> low
>> cost braille display.
>>
>> Well, I kind of wonder the same. Besides, except from the Braille Note
>> takers, all other Braille displays I have been in touch with personally,
>> mainly has done only this one function, translating the contents of the
>> screen into Braille. In that sense, this is no news, and nothing
>> revolutionizing. What caught my great interest, was the estimated pricing.
>> If they are able to build a 20cell Braille display for something like 300
>> dollars, that would actually revolutionized the market.
>>
>> Guess things are pretty in its starting grope at the moment. At least,
>> that
>> is what I took from the article. It will be interesting to see, when the
>> unit is finally hitting the market, what it is like. Let's just hope, they
>> are able to keep it that low-priced. I mean, likely enough, modern
>> technology does not cost all that much, so to manufacture the unit for a
>> low
>> price, I guess should be possible. The big bottleneck often comes into
>> existence, when you are to distribute and resell the product. Then, you
>> see
>> the resellers grabbing their piece of the cake, and then there is local
>> taxes, customs fees, some freight costs, someone who wants to earn their
>> chocolate bar, the dog needs its bone, and your baby wants its bottle.
>> Smiles. Well, my point is, they did not tell that the 300 dollars would be
>> the price you and I am going to pay, at the end of the day. If that would
>> be
>> the ccase, they must have shortened really down on the costs. Now, lately
>> we
>> have seen a Braille typewriter hit the market, all made up of plastics. I
>> haven't touched it, so cannot speak for its quality. Yet, they could of
>> course do something similar with the new Braille display - made up of
>> cheap
>> parts.
>>
>> The other way they could keep this low price, would be in the case when
>> some
>> company or cherity sponsors the whole project. But then it will be
>> interesting to see, if they only sponsor the product, if it is sold to
>> poor
>> parts of the world, or if it is meant to be sponsored for everyone.
>>
>> Guess we just have to wait and see. For sure, if they are able to launch
>> this product on the market for that price, it is going to put some
>> pressure
>> on the existing manufacturers. And if they do, will the rest of the market
>> follow custom? Or, are they going to make some new jumps?
>> Smile. Time will show.
>>
>> Still, I wish they had specified a bit more about the product. Like which
>> features you would get. True, they say it is going to connect via USB and
>> Bluetooth, but I already have one display that does so. Since it is only
>> going to have 20cells, I hope they will make it fit in my pocket, making
>> it
>> really portable. But then they also need ensure a good, solid
>> construction.
>>
>> Now, we just need have them manufacture a pocket-sized, 300 dollar,
>> non-interpretting Optacon. Apparently, the willingness and technology is
>> already there, they just have to see the importance. Smile.
>>
>>
>> David
>>
>> On 8/12/2014 8:02 AM, Christine Szostak wrote:
>>> Hi All,
>>> Anyone know what makes this different from any other basic braille
>>> display on the market and so makes it cheaper? That was never
>>> specified and I am really curious since there are a number of
>>> dedicated braille displays that do nothing but provide basic braille
>> feedback in refreshable format.
>>> Have a wonderful week all!
>>> Chris
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "C. Pond" <cpond@xxxxxxxxx>
>>> To: "optacon list" <optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>> Sent: Monday, August 11, 2014 3:30 PM
>>> Subject: [optacon-l] Orbit Research Group & TBG announce project for
>>> low cost braille display.
>>>
>>>
>>>> Orbit Research and the Transforming Braille
>>>>> Group Announce Agreement to Produce Low-cost Refreshable Braille
>>>>> Display
>>>>>
>>>>> WILMINGTON, DE â?" August 6, 2015 â?" Orbit Research LLC and the
>>>>> Transforming Braille Group LLC are pleased to announce an agreement
>>>>> to produce a low cost, refreshable braille display.
>>>>>
>>>>> Orbit, an international engineering company based in Wilmington,
>>>>> Delaware, specialising in high quality, low cost products for blind
>>>>> and partially sighted people, will be undertaking the research,
>>>>> development and manufacture of this unique product.
>>>>>
>>>>> The Transforming Braille Group LLC is a global consortium of
>>>>> organisations of and for the blind which is investing $1m in the
>>>>> project.
>>>>>
>>>>> The objective of the project is to produce a stand-alone 20-cell
>>>>> refreshable braille display for $300 (or Ã,£200) which will bring
>>>>> refreshable braille within the reach of children in developing
>>>>> countries and will provide libraries in developed countries with a
>>>>> viable alternative to hard copy braille. The product will be
>>>>> launched at CSUN in 2016.
>>>>>
>>>>> The display is designed to work through USB and Bluetooth
>>>>> connectivity with 'smart' phones and tablets. It is not intended to
>>>>> compete with high specification refreshable braille display already
>>>>> on the market, primarily used in education and employment but is
>>>>> intended to bring braille displayed e-books to a wide audience at an
>>>>> economical price.
>>>>>
>>>>> "The agreement with TBG is a landmark in our journey to develop and
>>>>> manufacture essential products at an affordable cost through the
>>>>> application of mainstream technology in unique and innovative
>>>>> waysââ,¬Â� said Dr. Gina Spagnoli, Orbit Researchââ,¬â"¢s Founder.
>>>>> ââ,¬Å"While each of our previous products has brought a multi-fold
>>>>> improvement in the state of the art in terms of performance, cost,
>>>>> size and features, we are thrilled that through this partnership
>>>>> with TBG, we will be able to offer a game-changing product that will
>>>>> impact the daily lives of millions of blind people across the
>>>>> worldââ,¬Â�
>>>>>
>>>>> TBG President, Kevin Carey said: "At last we have a technology which
>>>>> will guarantee the survival of braille. It has been my
>>>>> long-standing, publicly stated objective to find a disruptive
>>>>> technology which will radically force down the cost of refreshable
>>>>> braille so that the world's digital content becomes available in a
>>>>> tactile format. This new device will bring braille within the price
>>>>> range of educators in developing countries and will enable most
>>>>> blind people to access e-books and other internet material without
>>>>> resorting to specialist libraries."
>>>>>
>>>>> TBG estimates that its new product will retail at a unit cost less
>>>>> than 20% of the current market price.
>>>>>
>>>>> Contact details:
>>>>> Kevin Carey, President,
>>>>> Transforming Braille Group LLC
>>>>> Tel: +44(0)1273 834321
>>>>> Email: <mailto:humanity@xxxxxxxxxxx>humanity@xxxxxxxxxxx
>>>>> www.Transformingbraille.org (under construction)
>>>>>
>>>>> Carla Morris
>>>>> Orbit Research LLC
>>>>> Tel: 1-888-606-7248
>>>>> Email:
>>>>> <mailto:morris.carla@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>morris.carla@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>>> m
>>>>> www.orbitresearch.com
>>>>>
>>>> David Andrews and long white cane Harry.
>>>> E-Mail: dandrews@xxxxxxxx or david.andrews@xxxxxxxxxx
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> napub mailing list
>>>> napub@xxxxxxxxxx
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