The Open Source Canute Scientific Aims for "Parity of Display" for Vision-Impaired Scientists

UK-based Bristol Braille Technology is preparing to launch an open source Braille workstation, designed with the needs of scientists with visual impairment in mind — offering a 40×9 six-dot Braille display above a traditional input keyboard, all powered by a Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computer with a secondary Raspberry Pi Zero as a display driver.

"Canute Scientific has been designed around more than a decade's feedback we've had on our existing products and their prototypes, the Canute 360 and the Canute Console," Bristol Braille Technology's Ed Rogers explains of the company's latest design. "It focuses on high value added use-cases in technical and scientific subjects where its use will directly contribute to a blind user's productivity, earning potential, and creativity. These use cases include astronomy, data analytics, robotics, computer science, graph theory, and the list is growing every month."

The device itself, which is powered by a Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computer hidden inside the casing communicating with a secondary Raspberry Pi Zero acting as a display driver in concert with two Microchip ATmega32U4 microcontrollers, is shaped somewhat like a vintage TRS-80 Model 100 or similar tablet-style portable. There's a standard QWERTY keyboard taking up the bottom part of the flat slab, and a hinged lid above — but in addition to hosting a 13" "high contrast visual monitor," the lid also protects a 40×9 six-dot Braille display.

Developed by Louis Braille in 1834, Braille is a tactile writing system made up of arrays of dots and read by touch. In everyday use, Braille is typically embossed into paper, signage, and the like, but Braille displays take the concept further by allowing each dot to be raised or lowered programmatically — creating a refreshable display. In the case of the Canute Scientific, these programmable dots are made from POM-H and lock in place once raised to offer a firm reading experience with no ambiguity, its creators say.

In addition to acting as a display and input device for an external PC, the Canute Scientific can also work as a standalone system or an interface for industrial equipment and more. "You can make the Scientific the center of your technology development workflow," Rogers claims. "The Scientific is compatible with all Raspberry Pi breakout boards, sensors, drives, cameras, robotics kits, audio and video extensions, GPIO boards and more, which can be added to Canute Scientific internally or connected externally via the 40 pin I/O out. Canute Scientific can interpret video input, RS232, Centronix, numerous other serial and parallel connections and can be used to control laboratory equipment and read back data from said equipment as spatial tactile read-outs in graphs, diagrams or tables."

The company is preparing to crowdfunding production of the Canute Scientific on Crowd Supply soon, and has pledged to make its design files and firmware available "before the first products are shipped to customers" under an unspecified open source license. The company's Tactile Commons applications, meanwhile, have already been published under the reciprocal GNU General Public License 3.