> The Optacon offers capabilities that no other device offers It was discontinued in 1996, how is it still doing something that no other device offers?
Devices don't magically stop working when the company stops making them.
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Optacon
11–20 of 36 posts
Re: Optacon
#12Was this the device that Whistler used in the movie Sneakers? I guess that was more of a keyboard or monitor though...
He used a braille terminal.
Re: Optacon
#13It's sad how some great tech is killed just like that. Here I was, wearing my Pebble 2, being sad about how Pebble died, and then I read this. It is way more important for this kind of tech to live and improve.
Re: Optacon
#14“Bob Stearns – A blind computer programmer working at SRI. Bob used the Optacon in his work writing and de-bugging computer programs.“
I want to know more about this guy
Re: Optacon
#15Wow. Blast from the past. We used it in our Psychology Dept. to find out if users could perceive 3D images through simulated 3D rotation of the 2D lines on the device. This was in 1984 and I was the student intern software developer. They put the project on hold at some point.
Re: Optacon
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
because there's no money in it. that's the usual reason for things not steadily getting better over time.
I think there's money to be had. Insurance covers assistive devices for the blind like screen readers, which can be quite expensive. I can't find data on how many completely blind people there are in the developed world (many, like my mom, use a blind cane but can still read with their peripheral vision and large print), but I imagine there'd be enough to support a small start-up.
everybody wants to be an unicorn apparently, not many people wanting to be a 'small startup' when you can just coast at FAANG.
Re: Optacon
#17If I understood this correctly, a pixel that is "on" in the tactile array is not just raised up above the "off" level, it is actually vibrating up and down at somewhere between 250 and 300 Hz.
That certainly makes the mechanics complicated, an array of such pins is not exactly off the shelf today either, I think?
It feels like the rest of the system, including of course the optical part which was a major achievement back then with custom silicon to get 144 photodiodes on a single chip, are more or less trivial today. But the complexity of a mechanical "display" is still not something that is solved by mainstream components as far as I know.
I wonder how reliable they are, I hope it's "very" since people are still using mechanical devices from 15+ years ago for something as critical. :/
Edit: I found this link [1] which shows a cross-section of a sensing pin connected to a piezoelectric bimorph. I can't imagine packing 144 of that structure that closely together, though. But perhaps the device offsets the bimorphs from the array, connecting the pins and bimorphs mechanically.
Re: Optacon
#18> The Optacon offers capabilities that no other device offers It was discontinued in 1996, how is it still doing something that no other device offers?
I studied with someone who worked on a project to make dynamic Braille displays with heated wax (Wikipedia suggests alternative designs are available but more expensive) which isn't quite the same, but there's also less paper (with 'paperless' invoicing etc.) today and what there is could be scanned in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille_e-book
But it sounds like that came to an end:
> funding from the European Union ran out before it could be brought to production.
Re: Optacon
#19This story exemplifies why we need open source software and open hardware.
Re: Optacon
#20If I understood this correctly, a pixel that is "on" in the tactile array is not just raised up above the "off" level, it is actually vibrating up and down at somewhere between 250 and 300 Hz. That certainly makes the mechanics complicated, an array of such pins is not exactly off the shelf today either, I think? It feels like the rest of the system, including of course the optical part which was a major achievement…
YOu are right regarding the vibrating dots. Actually, that is what makes the Optacon special compared to say, a refreshable braille display. It is actually easier to feel small structures if they are vibrating.
However, one big disadvantage of that system was the resulting noise. Reading with an optacon is pretty noisy.
However, it gave blind people a sort of independence that does no longer exist today. Some Optacon users did their degree with just that device, and basically no external help. These days, OCR is still not enough and you often need help from a sighted person to actually get your study material prepared.