Noel, there is certainly no reason to apologize for a fascinating and highly
interesting post. Thanks a lot for this.
Ben
Am 08.02.2022 um 23:20 schrieb Noel Runyan <noel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
Ben and others,
My apologies in advance for the length of this response.
Quite a while ago, I shared on this list what Jim Bliss told me about
the Optacon and the noisy square wave drive.
He said that the initial testing subjects for the Optacon were so
excited about the first Optacons that none of them were complaining
about the annoying noise. It wasn't until Telesensory Systems had
committed to the large expense of having the custom display driver
chips produced that they started getting serious complaints about the
square wave noise being a real drawback. By that time, it was too
late and impractical to change the design.
When Canon developed what was later sold as the Optacon II, they did
it in secret without Bliss's knowledge. Because of that, they didn't
know that Bliss would have recommended that the Optacon II should
have been designed to use the smoother sounding sine wave drive for
the tactile array.
Later, when Blazie Engineering got a grant to work on developing an
Optacon III, they modified an Optacon classic to have its tactile
display driven by a smooth sine wave, and they had a blind
programmer, Phil Hall, who was an experienced user of the standard
Optacon, test the sine wave Optacon. He found that it seemed to work
as well as the normal square wave Optacon.
As Charles Pond has mentioned before on this list, The audible noise
of the standard Optacon does supply a little additional information
that seems to sometimes improve reading for some readers. As far as
we know, nobody has ever had a chance to do proper testing of
possible audible contribution differences amongst identical displays,
when driven by square, sine, triangle, or sawtooth wave dsignals.
There is another significant tactile response effect to be
considered, when comparing the standard Optacon's piezo-driven
tactile displays to magnetic solenoid-driven displays.
Because of the Optacon's cantilever pin actuator design, the tops
of the Optacon pins are allowed to wobble or vibrate slightly from
side to side. This sideways or lateral movement is considered to
improve the tactile response on the Optacon displays. Most of the
other designs proposed for an Optacon III tactile display are
magnetically driven actuators that only move the pin tops vertically
in a guide tube, thus not allowing any significant lateral motion of
the pin tops.
Anyone who investigates the merits of various shapes of the driving
signal wave forms for vibrating tactile displays should keep in mind
all of the relevant factors, such as lateral pin top movement, as
well as possible enhancement due to the different audible sound.
Cordially,
Noel
-
Noel H. Runyan
Email: Noel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
v At 10:24 AM 2/8/2022, Benjamin Blatter wrote:
Dan, it was very interesting to read from you how things worked at
your time. It's sad that your people felt disturbed by the sounds of
the Optacon. I read or heard somewhere that the developers of the
Optacon would have changed the sound to a less disturbing sound
curve like par examples sinus wave. But the Optacons where
progressed already way to far for this.
While I had joy with my Optacon the constant picking needles made me
tired after maybe 30 minutes and so I didn't really want to read
whole books this way. I for sure couldn't have kept up during my
musical education with an Optacon. In this time book scanners and
OpenBook came up and I got many materials presented on floppy discs :-)
Ben
Am 08.02.2022 um 18:20 schrieb dan.tevelde@xxxxxxxxxxx:school for
When I got my optacon in high school there were limited options where I
could get training and an optacon to keep. I got my training at a
the blind and my optacon was loaned to me by the U.S. Department ofable to keep
Education with the understanding that I would need to return it when I
graduated from college. Some people I know went to Associated Services for
the Blind in Philadelphia for training which I think included an optacon. I
wonder how much the training cost. The fact that I would not be
an optacon was a disincentive for me to ever become a fluentuser. I did not
get much pleasure from the device and my family hated the noise. I wasoptacons in
always having problems keeping paperback books and magazines open. Maybe my
skills would have improved if I had spent more time with the optacon. In
college I wasn't able to keep up without hiring readers. Recently A friend
gave me an optacon and I need to get around to fixing it. It isn't my
highest priority. If we ever get a new type of optacon with more features I
probably would be more interested in developing my skills using it. If I
don't get around to fixing the optacon then I will donate it to someone on
this list. I wouldn't do what some friends did by throwing their
the trash. I'm sure I could find someone to use it if I decide getting it(without the quotes) in the message subject.
fixed wouldn't justify my using it.
I know my comments sound negative but this is an example of where I would
want more modern technology to interest me more in an optacon. I think the
device should be essentially the same but with newer components and a
digital interface so software could be updated. We have the technology
except for a practical tactile array which is a real shame. The worst of it
is that we don't have enough interest in an optacon where we could obtain
funding for research and development. It is a sad situation.
Dan
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