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As a braille user, I was always fond of "laptops" without a built-in display, simply to save ssace, weight and power. I found a braille display which features

As a braille user, I was always fond of "laptops" without a built-in display, simply to save ssace, weight and power. I found a braille display which features a small compartment with micro-USB inside. Used a Pi Zero (these days 0w) to transform that braille display into a full-features Linux laptop. I documented the first version here: https://blind.guru/brlpi.html https://blind.guru/brlpi.html

djbelieny 7y ago
This has got to be one of the coolest uses of pi ever. Amazing !
benj111 7y ago
Cool. You make reference to fonts. I assume this isn't font in the traditional sense, ie the look (feel?) of a character.
- mlang23 7y ago
  Nope, I actually do refer to fonts as you know them. Long story short, prior to linux kernel 4.19 and brltty 6.0, only those characters that are mapped to a glyph in the currently loaded console font can be backtranslated to the actual codepoint. So to be able to read unicode braille (0x2800-0x28FF) I needed to load a braille font in addition to the standard latin glyph. This dependency on the loaded font has been removed with linux 4.19 and brltty 6.0. Now, there is a new device (/dev/vcsu) which can be used to read the unicode codepoints of characters on the console, without having to go through the loaded font.
  - benj111 7y ago
    Interesting. I assume its for differing reasons? You would want an X to always be an X and what feels most like an X to you, and not be worried about whether the X is Ariel or Times New Roman. Does it extend further to do italics and such? I had naively thought the screen would do all the heavy lifting in this situation, feed it text, and it converts it to braille.
abrugsch 7y ago
This is amazing! I played (very very briefly - like literally a 5 mins hands on) with a braille display sometime in the mid 90's. My dad was an early blind computer + speech user. like Apple II with ECHO-II speech synth kind or early and one summer had a visitor to the house with an earlier incarnation of the braille display. The guy had a whole load of adaptive tech with him but the braille display was the most interesing at the time. My dad never got into using anything like that, in fact never really got into portable tech as it was all still very big and bulky up to the point he passed away in 2003. I think he'd have loved getting involved in the Raspberry pi ecosystem and had he still been alive may have nudged me to making more use of them in assistive use cases. Thanks for the link!

djbelieny 7y ago

This has got to be one of the coolest uses of pi ever. Amazing !

benj111 7y ago

Cool. You make reference to fonts. I assume this isn't font in the traditional sense, ie the look (feel?) of a character.

mlang23 7y ago
Nope, I actually do refer to fonts as you know them. Long story short, prior to linux kernel 4.19 and brltty 6.0, only those characters that are mapped to a glyph in the currently loaded console font can be backtranslated to the actual codepoint. So to be able to read unicode braille (0x2800-0x28FF) I needed to load a braille font in addition to the standard latin glyph. This dependency on the loaded font has been removed with linux 4.19 and brltty 6.0. Now, there is a new device (/dev/vcsu) which can be used to read the unicode codepoints of characters on the console, without having to go through the loaded font.
- benj111 7y ago
  Interesting. I assume its for differing reasons? You would want an X to always be an X and what feels most like an X to you, and not be worried about whether the X is Ariel or Times New Roman. Does it extend further to do italics and such? I had naively thought the screen would do all the heavy lifting in this situation, feed it text, and it converts it to braille.

abrugsch 7y ago

This is amazing! I played (very very briefly - like literally a 5 mins hands on) with a braille display sometime in the mid 90's. My dad was an early blind computer + speech user. like Apple II with ECHO-II speech synth kind or early and one summer had a visitor to the house with an earlier incarnation of the braille display. The guy had a whole load of adaptive tech with him but the braille display was the most interesing at the time. My dad never got into using anything like that, in fact never really got into portable tech as it was all still very big and bulky up to the point he passed away in 2003. I think he'd have loved getting involved in the Raspberry pi ecosystem and had he still been alive may have nudged me to making more use of them in assistive use cases. Thanks for the link!