cross-posted from: https://wolfballs.com/post/9815
Ok so, we had a rapid discussion leading me to think of a completely different braille display design (independently, but with some appreciated feedback by @Kid_Napper, who may have independently created a similar design - I haven't still fully understood their design)
I was thinking of a tablet, so multiple lines of braille, but a single line could be ok too (tablet is just multiple single lines)
Basically I was thinking of each braille dot as like a light switch that you flip up and down, it could be on a gear, and there would be "flipper" device that goes across the rows, like a printer does to put dots on a paper, to either skip the dots or flip it up. Maybe there could be some part of the gear that locks in place so the user can't press down hard on it to turn it back "off".
So there's a track on the sides so the printer can go up to down and then back up The gears could have another light switch on the bottom so that when the printer goes up it "trips" all the gears to reset them to being "off".
I don't know how to create the printer device and what to make the switches out of, that's probably the main design question. (It's some kind of servo motor I think). They could also flip multiple dots at once if it was possible to design it that way, which might be multiple servo motors at once.
Another related idea is an interface like a standalone "tablet page" that you "feed" through a printer, and it keeps the flipped up switches until you feed it through again. So you could have multiple sheets of "tablet paper" you feed through this device, kind of like having refreshable braille books. The tablet idea just puts the printer inside a box under a tablet page and allows the "printer" to be able to move up and down within a box under a "tablet page", whereas in the standalone "tablet page" idea I think of it as being able to "roll" through a printer that just goes left and right and pushes the "page" through it.
I don't know if there's a name for it, but have you seen those robots that, whenever you flip a switch on, an arm comes out and automatically flips the switch back to off? It's a useless device, but that's kind of one way I have of conceptualizing automating flipping switches up, with whatever this robot thing is using.
Another way of conceptualizing this, instead of light switches, is there are these "autism" / "ADHD" toys that are like bubble wrap, it just lets you push a dot up and down, and so maybe if this could be resized and reshaped and then a robot could just push each one up, that's the same kind of idea: https://www.target.com/p/rainbow-bubble-popper-sensory-fidget-toy-silicone-stress-reliever-toy-autism-special-needs-2-pack/-/A-83852359
(I suppose I should check and see how the current braille devices work)
So my main question is about what to use for the "switches" and "printer" mechanism, if anyone has any ideas.