[BRLTTY] Choosing a suitable braille display

[Jason White]

On Sun, Feb 17, 2008 at 10:24:39PM +0000, Michael Whapples wrote:
> I am in the process of choosing what equipment I will need for my work,
> and a braille display is one of the items. May be someone could give me
> an idea of which ones work well with brltty (any work particularly well,
> or any which don't work very well although having a driver) (as I will
> be using Linux as part of my job), or generally what the different ones
> are like to use. May be in giving me any information, may be you want to
> read the extra information below.
> 

I have had positive experiences with the Baum Supervario (also known as
Brailliant in some countries) displays, which are well supported and work
reliably with BRLTTY.

However, I would suggest reading the specifications provided by the
manufacturers of various braille displays for which BRLTTY has drivers. Once
you know which ones have the features that you want, and you've narrowed the
options down to two or three, you can always ask a more specific question on
the list to ascertain how well these displays are supported and what the
experiences of other users have shown.

This is not to suggest that there is anything wrong with asking the above
question, only that you may find it helpful to ask for specific advice once
you have a small number of displays in mind.

before buying my display I read the specifications of products from all of the
major braille display manufacturers for which BRLTTY drivers existed at the
time.
> I am not new to braille displays, I used a ALVA 544 traveller whilst at
> university, and have got on with that very well. I have heard that alva
> have been taken over or something, so not sure if the ALVA displays can
> still be bought.

Apparently, they can, though precisely what the long-term effects of the
acquisition of Alva by Tieman will be remain to be seen. The new company is
called Optelek (http://www.optelek.nl/).

I don't know whether they remain in the cell manufacturing business as well as
the braille display business however. I would suggest paying attention to the
kinds of braille cells used in any display that you plan to buy. For example,
my display is said to contain cells from KGS in Japan, who use a patented
design that facilitates cleaning and servicing of the pins and the
piezoelectricelements, including the replacement of those elements without
having to replace the entire cell module. Obviously, this can ave costs if
there are ever problems with the cells. By now, other major cell manufacturers
such as metec may have similar technology, but I don't know to what extent
this is the case. Papenmeier, for example, use Metec cells and I suspect that
Handytech do as well.