Finally, here are the parts used for our simple prototype.

Our device is able to “display” two characters on two braille cells from Metek. It is connectable with any computer using an USB port, thanks to the Arduino platform the device can communicate with the host computer to ask for characters to display at the right position.

The navigation interface consists of a proportional joystick and two buttons.

Basically this prototype can run easily from a Linux platform. Because it is not easy to “see” the braille cells I’ve added two LEDs matrix to display the result.

The current status is :

* LEDs are displaying the right values (braille characters) sent by the computer
* The braille cells are not connected because of power supply issue
* A driver is available for libbraille and I started another one for BrlTTY

The prototype should provides following elements :

• USB and Bluetooth interfaces
• Braille refreshable cells (any number)
• Joystick and buttons for navigation
• LEDs matrix display for easy development
• Haptic force
• Microcontroller simple code
• BrlTTY and libbraille drivers
• Adapted case