2018-06-20 01:16:29

HI,
I was able to call national braille press and buy the new low cost braille me display. what is the difference between orbit reader20 and braille me?
price: orbit20 costs $474 from american printing house for the blind that includes shipping. without shipping it is $449. Braille me costs $499 plus $16 shipping from national braille press. you have to call them and ask to purchase it so far.
refresh rate: orbit20 can take up to half a second or so to refresh its line of 8 dot 20 braille cells. braille me refreshes instantly just like the older piezoelectric displays.
cursor router buttons: orbit20 does not have cursor router buttons. braille me does in fact have cursor router buttons. So if you need a low cost braille device with cursor router buttons, go for braille me.
cursor: orbit20 shows its cursor with dots 7-8. braille me shows its cursor with either a full cell, dots 1-2-3-4-5-6. or by blinking the unused dots in the cell. like if you have the letter a with the cursor under it. dot 1 stays up, while dots 2-3-4-5-6 blink up and down.
files: braille me only accepts up to a 32gig sd card, only accept .txt brf and brl files. txt and brl files are editable. brf are read only. no size limit on read only brf files. 100kb size limit or about 1000 25 line line 40 cell braille page limit for braille me note taker for each file. but you can always make new editable brl files.
folders: orbit20 supports making new folders while braille me does not.
bookmarks: orbit20 lets you add your own bookmarks. braille me does not not yet but should be in a future update.
autoscroll: orbit20 does not have autoscroll, braille me does have this.
built in translator: orbit20 does not have a built in grade2 translator and back translator. braille me contains its own built in forward and back translators for multiple languages.
size: I hear braille me is a little bigger than orbit20 is... I am excited to try the braille me so i can compare it to the orbit20 and see which is my personal favorite. I bought my braille me a few hours ago and just got the UPS shipping notification an hour or so ago with the tracking number. So now we got two low cost displays out there. orbit20 and braille me.

2018-06-20 06:20:31

This should be interesting. I hope that the future  updates add some of the features that the Braille Me is missing as compared with the Orbit Reader 20. Having a file manager would be an advantage. However, the refresh rate is the most compelling reason to get the Braille Me over the Orbit Reader, as well as the cursor routing buttons. It sounds like the competition is heating up.

I attack with the savagery of a thousand piranhas.

2018-06-20 07:28:28

If I can ever get help or something to where I can actually come up with the money. The braille me would be my choice!

2018-06-20 08:13:26

Hi.
Thanks so much for sharing, and for making this great comparison . I look very much forward to hear more about those two devices.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
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2018-06-20 13:44:02

I forgot to mention that both braille me and orbit reader20 have good file managers built in. you can make new files, delete, read, edit and rename files. one thing orbit20 lets you do that braille me does not is mark multiple files to move or delete them cut copy and paste. orbit20 also lets you protect and unprotect or make files read only with space plus p.

2018-06-20 23:26:11

Still too expensive. If I had to choose, though, I'd get the BrailleMe. Wait, does NVDA and other screen readers support the Braille-me yet?

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2018-06-21 01:07:16

yes, NVDA and voiceover and brailleBack support braille me. jaws does not. If you lived in India, you could get the braille me for 25000 indian Rupee, Rupee is Indian Asian currency. That comes out to $367 united states dollars. If you save up some money, you can could buy braille me.

2018-06-21 01:42:40

Too small for me. Even your average 8.5x11 sheet of paper is bigger than 20 cells... lol I would prefer either 32 or 40 personally.

Discord: clemchowder633

2018-06-21 02:05:47 (edited by defender 2018-06-21 06:48:05)

ya don't. always get. whatcha waaaaaaaaaant...


If you guys keep shitting on these leaps forward in innovation than it will make us look really ungrateful to the people doing the hard work...
Just because you might have already gotten your free ride simply by being born in the right place doesn't mean you should now discount advances that make it easier for others who will never have that chance.
And twenty cells is fine for presentation notes or shorthand, or up to intermediate math, but 32 or 40... Yeah I would like that too especially for reading books, but for 500 dollars with instant refresh, cursor routing, file management, and SD card support? lets not forget where we were even 2 years ago so easily guys...
I never even expected the SD card support and file manager, I'd trade that for more cells my self but their is no reason to be so cavalier about our criticism of such a new product, it just makes people wonder what all their hard work was for.
I'm not saying we should just take what we're given and avoid pushing for improvement either mind you, but lets at least try not to give the people that love to scream about entitled blindys more ammunition okay?

2018-06-21 03:02:11

did you not read my message? the braille me has 20 cells. there are 6 dots in each braille cell making a total of 120 dots or pins on the braille me. orbit20 has 20 cells, 8 dots per cell, so it has 160 dots in total. and I for one am glad people are innovating and making these much lower cost braille displays. I am excited to get my hands on the low cost braille me, tomorrow. I have an orbit reader20 and I like it a whole lot. and it only cost me $449. well $474 but that included shipping.

2018-06-21 03:06:45

I wasn't saying the product was bad, simply stating my opinion regarding display size... I'm glad these products exist, and would definitely grab one as a secondary or backup display. But I wouldn't use that as my daily driver, for obvious reasons. Nor am I shitting on the people who have put time and effort into making these, simply stating my own personal preferences... I'm grateful for anything I can get.

Discord: clemchowder633

2018-06-21 03:07:31 (edited by defender 2018-06-21 06:49:04)

I understand that Assault Freak, but it's the way you say it, not your valid concerns that are the problem, and it's not just you either.
Someone says hey look at this awesome new thing we spent years making a reality that wouldn't have even been considered possible 10 years ago and will improve the quality of life for potentially thousands of blind people who didn't have a chance to have it before, and it's even up to par with the current market offerings in performance!
And then you and Devinprater are basically just like, meh, not good enough, it's not the same as my 4 times more expensive one.
Now obviously your just talking about your own use case, but I think you can see how with no background or recognition of the massive potential benefit  to our community this could bring (at least not shown in that post) it could be pretty insulting for someone who helped with the project stumbling across it on Google...

2018-06-21 03:37:05

Honestly 18cells was my first display so I don't get why you guys are complaining about 20 cells. Now 12 cells...

2018-06-21 08:07:57

Well, regarding the numbers of cells, it is a very personal thing how many cells people are finding useful when reading. It also depends on what you are reading.
I'm using Braille mostly for small notes, and don't read long books or long documents. Therefore a small Braille display is what I prefer. But for people who are reading long books or documents, have to read texts loud fruently, prefer to use Braille over speech for everything etc. those people usually want a bigger display with more cells. Then, there are those people who simply don't care if there are 20 or 40 cells. So yeah, it's a very personal thing regarding the numbers of cells. smile

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2018-06-21 08:24:01

To clarify, I don't actually have a braille display at the moment.. which is why I made no mention of one... so the presumption about the fact I'm boasting about my own technology isn't quite on the mark. tongue And there in lies the danger of text on the internet.. people will spin everything to their own lens regardless of how it's worded. There's obvious negativity, and then there's a passing comment that can be seen as negative... and if that was the case with my first post, then I sincerely appologize. But I in no way insulted, litterally or implied, anything about either of these products... I simply stated that they were too small for my needs. Anyway.. let's not highjack this topic. I haven't ruled out getting one of these, as I said. Which one... I haven't decided on.

Discord: clemchowder633

2018-06-21 15:13:52

Haha...Just a few years ago I bought a 14 cell Braille display for about $1,000. I'm amazed that within that time the price has dropped so much. It actually hurts my heart, because the display I bought is dormant for the most part (due to lack of NVDA support) and now that they're actually fixing their Braille support, I don't even feel like using my display. So, for $1,000, I got 14 cells of Braille and barely any use out of the thing due to lack of support. Fast forward three years and the Braille support in the blindness community has skyrocketed.

Who knows, maybe it'll convince me to go dig up my dusty, expensive, small, previously  unsupported unit and actually use it full-time, like, three years after purchase. big_smile

I'm excited to see where the market goes in just another three years. But, yeah, I was one of those who bought into the smaller display craze back in the day for their "low cost." Never again. So, I for one am really happy to see the price dropping on these things.

2018-06-21 15:43:26

You can take it with you and use it with your phone.

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2018-06-22 06:55:15

Does anybody know of anyone who's actually had time with one of these? lol I was debating on it, but I'd like to gather some info first if possible. Like, more than a week.

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2018-06-22 12:41:50

@Ironcross32: I prefer touch typing over using a Braille display. While iOS 11 has intorudced more reliable Braille input (re: dropped keys and things,) it's not to the point yet where I feel comfortable going to town on a Braille display with it. I've tried, and spend far too much time inserting words iOS happened to drop.

2018-06-22 13:27:05

I've spent more time reading than writing, my display is a 40 cell, so not practical on the go with a phone.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2018-06-22 16:36:07

braille me is not yet ready, users will be a bit frustrated and here is why. note, if blind turn on all punctuation in your screen reader to read this to get the most out of it.
Here are the issues with braille me.

1. the five braille problem characters and capitalized letters or uppercase letters.
a. Currently for showing dot 4, dots 4-5, dots 2-4-6, dots 1-2-4-5-6, and dots 1-2-5-6, braille me expects to see @ ^ [ ] \ ... But many translators use ` ~ { } |  ... Braille me should also recognise these characters...
b. Braille me if it sees `~{}| it just shows empty cells or spaces.
c. Braille me shows empty cells for lowercase letters. Braille me should recognise lowercase letters because many translators use these, such as Braille Blaster.
2. suppress or remove all white space.
a. extra carriage returns, blank pages in braille ready or embosser ready files, and multiple blank spaces take up space on 20 cell displays. Add menu options that when turned on will suppress extra space.
3. page navigation.
a. Braille me should have page movement commands. Move by page should be defined as: move back or forward 1000 (one thousand) characters or until a formfeed character is encountered.
4. custom Bookmarks.
a. Add ability to add, clear, and jump to your own custom bookmarks in files.
5. Add ability to write in computer braille or raw text or .txt. There is no dot 7 so to compensate for this, make all uppercase computer braille letters blink up and down. blink time should be configurable.
a. NVDA when using expand to computer braille should also have capital letters blink up and down.
6. NVDA.
a. blinking capital letters.
b. ability to write in braille into the computer.
7. display emulation.
a. to work with jaws and other screen readers and devices, add option to emulate a Baum vario ultra 20 display, or baum displays. this should work with both USB and bluetooth, and be HID compliant.
8. adding languages.
a. add ability and documentation for adding languages. example, I want braille me's interface to be in German, or Icelandic braille. and I want to read braille and write in German or Icelandic braille in the editor. Or in Chinese and Japanese braille if I wish.
9. turn off all beeps and audio tones and audio indications.
a. the beeps are very loud and will be distracting in class, business and church environments. Add a menu option to turn these off. All beeps and audio tones emitted by braille me should have the ability to be completely turned off. Whether braille me is being turned on, shut down, errors occur. if braille me restarts or has a big error... no beeps should be heard. Braille me should be completely silent when beeps are off.
10. better documentation for editing date and time. I had to play with braille me and teach myself how to edit date and time. explain to the user, first use cursor router buttons to place the cursor on the first number, use navigation buttons to set the first number. use cursor router buttons to move to the next number and edit it until time and date are set the way you wish and then press enter or dot8.
11. add other encoding methods other than ansi/ascii for languages such as japanese.

2018-06-22 16:36:53

i have a braille me in my hands right now. braille cells are very good. its just those issues i mentioned! they must be fixed!

2018-06-22 16:41:29

oh and yes i already sent all my concerns to both national braille press who i bought braille me from, and the developers themselves. i expect nearly all these issues to be fixed within 3 months by the time school starts up.

2018-06-22 16:46:01

i just got an email from Innovision makers of braille me. They told me all those issues are being worked on and they will keep me updated.

2018-06-22 18:04:59

What I'm gathering from your posts are that the editor has some "show-stopper" issues, and also with respect to NVDA, you can't type / send commands through your display only, meaning that you can only use the display to read NVDA output; you must use your actual keyboard for input.

Is this correct?

Thanks so much for your review of BrailleMe, it's so helpful to get an "experience review" instead of a "this is what I found on Google review." You're doing awesome by sharing your knowledge with the rest of us.