Blitab is on the list .

I knew that braille displays are outlandishly priced compared to what you get, but I hadn't actually looked up prices on braille books until 5 minutes ago. An astronomy book for 3rd graders is going for $500-1000. Its sequel is on Amazon for over $9000. It... has illustrations? I've read one of these, and it is very well done, and no way in Ursa Minor would I pay quadroople digits for it. Never have I been so glad for the existence of NLS.

@aprone, not a bad idea. Make a design specification that doesn't complicate things, makes machines easy to produce, and more importantly, cheep.
I am of course being sarcastic. That would be entirely ineffective and I'd almost say impossible, accept some smart alec will come up here and prove me wrong. I actually do want to see this, I just don't think its doable with the technology we have.

Lol! Rachel, you've actually got something there with the programmable chips. That actually is where nfc, the same technology used for tap-and-pay terminals, has great potential. They would have to make the communication field farther out, but if that could happen, nfc chips could most certainly be used. I know standard nfc chips are really cheap, and definitely cheap when bought in large quantities. What you reminded me of was the aware app, which received information from beacons. The beacons probably use the same nfc protocol, but are far-field enough that a person could walk past and hear the message. It was beta tested at the Chicago Lighthouse which is how I heard of it, and I did ask and it apparently costs 400 bucks for a building to install a set of beacons, but that may change once they've been around long enough. With that in mind, since the app relies on the installation of beacons, the aware app itself is completely free for end users.

Firstly, I believe the aware app will be available for both android and ios. At least, I think so. This is beta technology so I can't be sure. Second, I don't know how far the communication field will go. If it's only as far as standard nearfield communication, then yes, you'd have to hold your phone in your hand. If they've boosted the signal range, then you *may* be able to not have to hold the phone. And if it's just so that you hear the phone, no need to worry about that. Use Aftershokz. Pricey but well worth it. Been using mine for a year and am completely satisfied. In fact, don't judge me, lol, but when I feel I need a speaker instead of the headphones, I use nearby explorer with a jawbone mini jambox in my pocket, connected to the phone, and the acapella Rion voice. Lol!

Patents I think are part of the problem, coupled with a lack of investment and a small market. Some tech might hit the market or get weak sales projections, then drop out when they don't see a return. Blitabs been selling a lot of hype to investors at conventions for awhile, although I doubt it will get far as a product especially with the APH [Graphiti] around the corner.

The [Braigo Printer] seems promising though, he made his first lego version [open source] so for around $350 you can build your own mini-braille printer right now. Don't really understand why his second commercial version has to have IoT wifi to the cloud and social media crap though, would think it would be better to make a basic printer and build addon packages off that, oh well.

Historically there's also [this] mechanical multi-row display from 2009 build off the concept of a music box, and more recently mechanical braille cells [here].

Yeah, might wanna get an external charger that isn't bulky, or a charging case, or a q i wireless charging pad, lol. As far as I know, it's not bluetooth, it's nfc. I don't think they'd be able to have Bluetooth do that unless they got rid of authentication and set up autoconnect. Nfc is like technically advanced motion sensors, maybe compare it to infra-red but newer and without the beam? I'm honestly not sure how much battery power he nfc chip uses. And I'd say just like any gps app, the app would most definitely run in background. For Android, that's easy, all they need to use is the tts api directly instead of talkback, just like Nearby Explorer does. As for Ios, they did open the speech api for that as well, so doing that should work just fine, gps apps have already done it. With that in mind, all you'd need is a loud portable speaker or a set of aftershokz. Also, I don't know how much braille signs cost for each installation. The lighthouse told me it was 400 bucks for an installation of programmable beacons. Even if the braille signs are a cheaper starting cost, you have to replace the whole damn sign if something goes wrong or there's a room gets replaced. For the beacons, all you'd need to do is reprogram the message, and, if needed, reinstall the same beacon.

The whole electrovibration 2d+textures thing had me wondering. Last I heard, the smallest Tixels™ are about 1in^^2, but can apparently do arbitrary shapes. So if we focus on an intersection of 4tx, we need each tixel to convey at least 4bits of information. So 8 textures and 2 shapes, or whatever combination is practical. More shapes would be better, but I'm not sure it could handle enough single-tixel shapes.
More realistically? The requirements are that we can shove 8bits of tactile information into  something around 2cm^2. Would it be more possible to have an array of 1cm windows that can open or close, and maybe have a bigger pin-type thing or 2 under it? that's not much, though. If you could have more than just up/down as states? Down, partially up, entirely up? If we can fit 4 3-state dots into the space normally reserved for 6-8 2-state dots, we can have 81 combinations. 6-dot braille supports only 64 combinations. So there's that.

I honestly think I'd have a lot more of a motivation to practice braille if it was easily accessible/afordible to me. I use braille screen input like, a lot, on my iPhone, and its much faster than typing. But I often find myself struggling on different letters and combinations, etc, because I just don't have a way to practice braille on my own terms.

Nls here in the US has a braille book program, but I personally don't use it, and prefer the digital book cartridges. Although they're trying to get braille displays to users over here. That would've been a gag if thought up years ago, but now with the orbit reader 20 on the horizon, that seems like a realistic goal.

I remember that they said one of the ways the price is kept low is that they're using off-the-shelf parts. I don't know what that means in this case. although I'm feeling positively disposed toward 3d printing all of a sudden.