4 ms·

As someone blind, my two pens are that noise, power consumption, and fragility are things that could be compromised to a large degree. If I've had a braille dis

As someone blind, my two pens are that noise, power consumption, and fragility are things that could be compromised to a large degree. If I've had a braille display at school and uni, it would've helped with many of my math issues. If it works and it is cheap, it would be a big step forward for many people. Power is not that expensive compared to the current displays, noise could be mitegated or just powered through, and important stuff could be kept in good order. Money are harder to spend. Screen readers are perfect for plain text and gui navigation, but a multi dimensional object like an equation are easier to understand if you have your hands on it.

nolist_policy 3y ago
I wonder if one could combine a low-fidelity braille display (maybe with heat or vibration (piezoelectricity)) with touch sensitivity and context-sensitive tts in response to touching/reading the display.
- magicalhippo 3y ago
  I was curious about just temperature. From this pdf[1] it seems fingers have 3-5 cold sensing points per square cm, with cold sensing points being about 10x as prevalent as warm sensing points. So I was thinking about using a combination of a thermoelectric cooler[2] coupled to some thin metal rods, which have individually wound coils around them near the top. The rods would be mounted flush to allow touching all of them at once. The cooler would ensure the rods are normally cold, and the coils would provide induction heating. Thus by changing which coils are activated, the different rods would be either cold or not, and due to the active cooling and relatively low thermal mass should change state quite quickly. At least that's the idea. Though perhaps we just don't have enough sensitivity in our fingers to pick this up. And it wouldn't work well for a portable device due to power draw. edit: Found this[4] paper where they try a temporal method instead of spatial method to use temperature to convey information. [1]: https://web.as.uky.edu/Biology/faculty/cooper/bio350/Bio350%20Labs/WK13-temp%20Lab/skin%20map%20Human-partC-page%207.pdf https://web.as.uky.edu/Biology/faculty/cooper/bio350/Bio350%... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_heating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_heating [4]: https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5354/10/10/1156 https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5354/10/10/1156
  - digdugdirk 3y ago
    I love unique interface ideas, and this one definitely counts. What are your thoughts on how to account for the user's fingers heating up the interface rods? I'm imagining someone going back to read a previous character, and their fingers having essentially "reset" the character from body temp.
    - magicalhippo 3y ago
      This was just off the top of my head, but I imagined the thin rods having low enough thermal mass that the active TEC cooling would not cause fingers to significantly heat up the rods. That is, the TEC cooler should be able to relatively quickly lower the temperature after the finger is removed. Again, off the top of my head idea so no idea if it would work or not, but doing a quick viability check should be relatively easy and cheap.
  - sitkack 3y ago
    I have thought of a similar design, but little solenoids inject themselves into the cold path bridging the gap, the TEC would chill a huge thermal mass and then the individual rods could be chilled and heated rather rapidly.
crote 3y ago
Would it help to have some kind of a reverse plotter? Imagine an XY gantry like a 3D printer has. The axis are free, so the device reads the coordinates as the user moves them. It in turn has a little servo motor in there moving the "stylus" in the Z direction. When trying to view an image, white would be mapped to "down" and black would be mapped to "up". This would make it possible to "view" simple 2D plots, or perhaps even equations. User experience could be improved by using force-feedback motors on the XY gantry, essentially nudging the stylus to stay on the line. Something like this should be somewhat doable for about $200-300, I reckon.
- gostsamo 3y ago
  Hard to say. Information density matters and also the speed with which one can explore the graph. The limited use cases also might make it impractical.

nolist_policy 3y ago

I wonder if one could combine a low-fidelity braille display (maybe with heat or vibration (piezoelectricity)) with touch sensitivity and context-sensitive tts in response to touching/reading the display.

magicalhippo 3y ago
I was curious about just temperature. From this pdf[1] it seems fingers have 3-5 cold sensing points per square cm, with cold sensing points being about 10x as prevalent as warm sensing points. So I was thinking about using a combination of a thermoelectric cooler[2] coupled to some thin metal rods, which have individually wound coils around them near the top. The rods would be mounted flush to allow touching all of them at once. The cooler would ensure the rods are normally cold, and the coils would provide induction heating. Thus by changing which coils are activated, the different rods would be either cold or not, and due to the active cooling and relatively low thermal mass should change state quite quickly. At least that's the idea. Though perhaps we just don't have enough sensitivity in our fingers to pick this up. And it wouldn't work well for a portable device due to power draw. edit: Found this[4] paper where they try a temporal method instead of spatial method to use temperature to convey information. [1]: https://web.as.uky.edu/Biology/faculty/cooper/bio350/Bio350%20Labs/WK13-temp%20Lab/skin%20map%20Human-partC-page%207.pdf https://web.as.uky.edu/Biology/faculty/cooper/bio350/Bio350%... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_heating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_heating [4]: https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5354/10/10/1156 https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5354/10/10/1156
- digdugdirk 3y ago
  I love unique interface ideas, and this one definitely counts. What are your thoughts on how to account for the user's fingers heating up the interface rods? I'm imagining someone going back to read a previous character, and their fingers having essentially "reset" the character from body temp.
  - magicalhippo 3y ago
    This was just off the top of my head, but I imagined the thin rods having low enough thermal mass that the active TEC cooling would not cause fingers to significantly heat up the rods. That is, the TEC cooler should be able to relatively quickly lower the temperature after the finger is removed. Again, off the top of my head idea so no idea if it would work or not, but doing a quick viability check should be relatively easy and cheap.
- sitkack 3y ago
  I have thought of a similar design, but little solenoids inject themselves into the cold path bridging the gap, the TEC would chill a huge thermal mass and then the individual rods could be chilled and heated rather rapidly.

crote 3y ago

Would it help to have some kind of a reverse plotter? Imagine an XY gantry like a 3D printer has. The axis are free, so the device reads the coordinates as the user moves them. It in turn has a little servo motor in there moving the "stylus" in the Z direction. When trying to view an image, white would be mapped to "down" and black would be mapped to "up". This would make it possible to "view" simple 2D plots, or perhaps even equations. User experience could be improved by using force-feedback motors on the XY gantry, essentially nudging the stylus to stay on the line. Something like this should be somewhat doable for about $200-300, I reckon.

gostsamo 3y ago
Hard to say. Information density matters and also the speed with which one can explore the graph. The limited use cases also might make it impractical.