3 ms·

Looking at the picture of the braille display and seeing the comments on how expensive they are makes me wonder: is there a more general-purpose larger display

Looking at the picture of the braille display and seeing the comments on how expensive they are makes me wonder: is there a more general-purpose larger display that simply provides a large grid of raised/raisable bumps along those lines? I can't imagine that the mechanical aspects would be that complex if the bump size was large enough, and even 4 "colors"/heights might be feasible (flat, low, medium, high). The electronics seem like they'd be almost trivial, and I'd imagine that it wouldn't be difficult to incorporate some level of touch/pressure sensitivity, possibly with detection of pressure down on an actuator holding a pin up. Heck, if individual of perhaps 16x16 could be made then a "grid" of those could provide quite a possible display capability.

fencepost 10y ago
As a minor update, I was thinking about something similar to the 2002 prototype mentioned in this article: http://newatlas.com/go/8267/ http://newatlas.com/go/8267/ with a couple of things licensed out 10 years ago (to a company that currently appears to only have a font that they license). Seems to me that you might even be able to build something that would identify as a VGA monitor, either monochrome or in one of the legacy 4-color modes at a low resolution.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
j_s 10y ago
Comment from someone pessimistic because of experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13764689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13764689 Last month on Dot Watch – A braille and tactile smartwatch | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13762768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13762768
- fencepost 10y ago
  Interesting, sounds like the combination of durable, compact and enough motion for raising pins just isn't there. That's a bit surprising, but I suppose most industrial applications where you need to raise/lower a pin repeatedly for millions of cycles don't also have the same kind of space constraints or have other options like air jets. Thanks for catching that and pointing me to it.

fencepost 10y ago

As a minor update, I was thinking about something similar to the 2002 prototype mentioned in this article: http://newatlas.com/go/8267/ http://newatlas.com/go/8267/ with a couple of things licensed out 10 years ago (to a company that currently appears to only have a font that they license). Seems to me that you might even be able to build something that would identify as a VGA monitor, either monochrome or in one of the legacy 4-color modes at a low resolution.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

j_s 10y ago

Comment from someone pessimistic because of experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13764689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13764689 Last month on Dot Watch – A braille and tactile smartwatch | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13762768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13762768

fencepost 10y ago
Interesting, sounds like the combination of durable, compact and enough motion for raising pins just isn't there. That's a bit surprising, but I suppose most industrial applications where you need to raise/lower a pin repeatedly for millions of cycles don't also have the same kind of space constraints or have other options like air jets. Thanks for catching that and pointing me to it.