[BRLTTY] Cadence display (was Re: My experience with Humanware Monarch)

[Jason J.G. White]

On 31/5/25 03:09, Devin Prater wrote:
> I have seen the Cadence Braille display. This one has a much, much 
> faster refresh rate, about as fast as regular displays. I think it 
> still has the issue of you can't touch the area of the display while 
> it refreshes, but it handles it much better. When you move your finger 
> from that exact cell, it refreshes. Now, it has four units that can be 
> conjoined into a larger display. You can even connect just two 
> together, in landscape or portrait configurations. The singleton is 
> about 40 cells, about ten cells across four lines.

As I remember, each Cadence display as 4 lines of 12 cells each. I have 
only used one in a demonstration at a conference. The refresh rate is 
fast enough to support animation, for example an object that moves 
around the combined display. Up to four devices can be placed adjacent 
to each other and connected to a host system via Bluetooth, then treated 
as a single, composite display of 24 cells by 8 lines. Each device has 
braille input keys and routing keys, among other controls.

Note that the cells have the standard braille configuration: the pins 
are not uniformly spaced in both dimensions. Consequently, when 
displaying graphics, the inter-cell space needs to be compensated for in 
software.

So far as I know, the Cadence requires its own software to be installed 
on host systems, and there is no support yet from any screen reader, or 
from BRLTTY - possibly no protocol information has been released to 
developers.