OrbitResearchJanuary2026ZoomMeeting Transcript
This is provided thanks to Seeing Hands, https://seeinghands.org/
 
[Note: This transcript was automatically generated. It will contain transcription errors. Frequent speakers were labeled, while infrequent ones are only identified with numbers.]

Robert Carter
All right, good morning or afternoon or evening, everyone, whatever time you happen to be listening to this. I'm Robert. I am the host of this Zoom meeting with Orbit Research. We do this once a month and we are back for the January meeting a little earlier than normal, but we didn't meet in December. So we are here in January. Hope everyone had good holidays. Happy New Year. And as is tradition, let's begin by checking in with the CEO of Orbit Research. Fankatesh, thank you, sir, for being here. Please give us an update on what has happened with Orbit Research since the last time we met.

Venkatesh Chari
Thank you, Robert. Thanks for having me. Thanks, everyone, for joining. Happy New Year to everybody. So yes, we have, we've been pretty busy. I'd be happy to share some updates. I think people have been awaiting updates on the Orbit Player and Orbit Speak, and so I'm happy to announce that we will have a release for the Orbit Player that's going to go out today. That's Wednesday, or rather, actually, sorry, tomorrow, Wednesday, January 14th. This will be a The 1.8 release, it will include a couple of changes to fix some issues related to software updating. That's actually one of the main challenges we have faced in the last month and a half that has delayed some of the deployment of release two as well. where there's some very unexpected behavior, which was very hard to track down. And thankfully, it has now been addressed, and you'll start seeing a lot more robustness and consistency in the over-the-air update process. So 1.8 will include those fixes as well as a fix for an issue related to the SD card, where I think a lot of folks noticed that if the unit was put to sleep and you were in the middle of reading or listening from the SD file on the SD card, it would kind of lose its position and unexpected things would happen. So that's been fixed as well. And the long-awaited 2.0 has been in beta for a couple of weeks. We made various improvements based on feedback. And the public beta is anticipated for next week. Again, that has been gated by this updating issue, which is now thankfully behind us. On the Orbit Speak as well, release 1.8 will be out on Thursday this week. It'll also fix the software update issue and the SD card connection issue as well. And then it'll be a little bit longer before 2.0 is available for Orbit Speak. But that's imminent as well. We're also working on some small but nice new features for Orbit Speak and Orbit Player. I don't want to announce them yet, but they're imminent. You know, we're trying to keep them as a surprise. On our Braille and graphic display products also. There's been a fair bit of activity. The Graffiti Plus, an update for this was released on Christmas Eve. Multiple features were added, including the ability to switch between different modes more easily, better connectivity with screen readers through different protocols, including HID Braille. also connectivity for the TI-84 calculator and the Orbit Sketch program that allows you to draw on a PC and some improvements to sleep and power consumption. We also had a release on Christmas Eve for the Orbit Slate, where a number of important issues, small issues, but important level of this were resolved. So there's improvements there. are a number of releases that are actually pending. I had talked about some of these last time and for various reasons, these releases were not made yet, but there's releases coming up in the next a week or so for the Orbit Reader 40 that resolves a couple of issues related to connections, emulation modes, and some error messages in certain situations. Orbit Reader 20 as well, there is a connectivity improvement. that's scheduled to come out sometime in the first half of next month. There's an Orbit Rider release also coming that will offer a broader range of intensity levels for the vibration, including higher levels of vibration. And finally, we are about to now release the a public API for the graffiti. So to be able to connect to the graffiti from any other device over USB or Bluetooth and be able to communicate with it to make it display various things, also take input from the graffiti. So we have developed a library of functions to do this in multiple languages. and we're going to be providing those as open source. We have also been making good progress on the leather case for the Orbit Player. In fact, I have the, hopefully the final prototype in my hand. As soon as this is approved, we hope to have it available. It'll probably still be about month and a half to two months before we have production units ready. But I know this has been eagerly awaited. So I want folks to know that work has been going on and there's been good progress. We have some conferences coming up for 2026, CSUN is from the 9th to the 13th of March and we'll be exhibiting there in Anaheim, California. Please come meet us at booth 418. We also have Site City in Frankfurt from the 27th to the 29th of May. And Of course, then we have the summer conventions of the NFB in early July and the ACB in late July. So we will, we have been also working on some new products and that are planned for launch later this year. So we'll be making some announcements at CSUN and showing prototypes. I can't talk too much about those yet, but it's going to be really, really exciting. So that's what I have for now, Robert. I'll hand the microphone back to you.

Robert Carter
All right. Well, very good. Sounds like a lot going on. Looking forward to that leather case making its way out into the world. That should be fun. Bobby, you've got your hand raised. Please unmute yourself and go ahead when you're ready.

Speaker 3
Okay, am I unmuted?

Robert Carter
Yes, you are. Go ahead.

Speaker 3
Okay, I just want to wish you and all the best of the Orbit company. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year to the Orbit research team, and I'm glad you're doing a great job. Here's my little minor issue, and we've discussed this before. I purchased a TB SD card because my old SD card only was like 50 megabits per second. So I got one that was over 150 megabits per second. So that's a lot faster. Now, this is just a minor issue. It's nothing major. When I boot up my Orbit, I have about 256 gigs of stuff on it already. So that gives me about 800 gigs free, obviously. So this is the deal. I have to wait. And when I go through the folders, like if I turn it only, this only happens when I go to the file manager, it says empty folder, empty folder. But then, as I said, when I take the card out, guess what? Everything is perfectly fine and I can navigate the file manager, but then I don't get the contents of the card, obviously, because I took it out. Now, I actually did some... investigating where I put a card reader with a USB-C dongle in there just for the hell of it. I didn't think it would work. And the card, it goes a lot faster with a card reader plugged into the device. Now, explain that one to me and not the reader.

Venkatesh Chari
Okay, so if I understand correctly, Bobby, first is, let me ask you a question. Is this for the Orbit player or Orbit?

Speaker 3
Yes, I own an Orbit player. And what happens is it takes about two minutes for the stuff to load. And that's quite a little bit long for the stuff to load onto the card. But when it's in the reader, it doesn't do that. So I don't know what the card reader in the device or could it be a software thing? I don't know.

Venkatesh Chari
So when you say it's tough to load, you mean for the file manager to be able to start reading from it?

Speaker 3
Yeah, exactly. That's what I mean.

Venkatesh Chari
Okay. So that's interesting. I mean, I can hazard a guess. I mean, the direct interface, which is what you're accessing when you insert the SD card directly into the slot, in general, ought to be faster. Now, it is possible, though, that somehow the communication priority over USB and your card reader, your external card reader, which you're plugging in through the USB-C port, perhaps has a newer, faster interface. and is therefore allowing you to load things faster? It's very interesting. We'll have to check this on our side, and I'm assuming it should be fairly easy to replicate. If you wouldn't mind dropping us an e-mail later, just if you can let us know what model of the card, the SD card you have.

Speaker 3
Yeah, it's a Samsung.

Robert Carter
Excuse me, we've got someone unmuted who's working with their screen reader. Can you please mute yourself? Oh, crap. Sorry, was that me? I said probably. I don't know. I don't hear the screen reader anymore.

Venkatesh Chari
So it's a Samsung SD card?

Speaker 3
Oh, the brand is Samsung and the brand I have it, the brand I actually had before did the same thing, but it was only a 256. That was a SanDisk. So then I do have an upgraded card and it's a Samsung.

Venkatesh Chari
Okay. Okay, so we'll check this out. I, other than guess, I don't know why it should be faster with an external card reader, but we'll check that out. Taking 2 minutes for things to load. So, you know, when you install or insert any kind of drive, and this is true even for a PC, you know, the operating system tries to create a it tries to read the folders, the folder structure, the file allocation table so that it can present it to you. And if there's a lot of data, then it can take some time. I think you'd mentioned that there's 250 gigabytes of data.

Speaker 3
Yeah, there is.

Venkatesh Chari
Which is quite a bit. So that could be one reason why it's taking some time to load and then be able to show it to you. Depending on sort of how the folders are nested and how many files and folders you have at each level, that can make some difference. I'm not exactly sure how Android does it, whether it goes through all the levels of the folder or just looks at it, looks at the top level of folders and files. I'm not exactly sure how Android does it. But if it is constructing a complete table going through all the levels, then that you can imagine could take some time because, I imagine you have probably thousands of files making up that 250 gigabytes of data, right? So that could be one reason. So very interesting issue. Thanks for bringing it up. We'll definitely look into it and maybe, you know, you can share a little more detail offline, maybe tell us sort of what kind of folder structure it has, how many files it has, and so on. I would definitely like to get to the bottom of it.

Robert Carter
All right. Well, thank you, Bobby. I appreciate it. We're going to go to Mitch next. You've had your hand up for a while. Please unmute yourself, Mitch, and go ahead when you're ready.

Speaker 4
Thanks. I'm having difficulty setting the time on my Orbit player. I found two cities that say America, one says America, Los Angeles, and one says America, Monterey. When I select those, it sets it to GMT. Then I gotta go to the advanced upon it back to the default.

Venkatesh Chari
Interesting. And your software is updated to the latest version.

Speaker 4
Yep, whatever came with it, when I forgot the unit is the OS it has.

Venkatesh Chari
Okay, so when did you receive the unit?

Speaker 4
I received it about three or four weeks before Christmas, something like that.

Venkatesh Chari
Okay, so that should be close to the latest versions. I am not sure why it's doing that, but I made a note. I'll take it up with the team. We'll reach out to you. I think if you purchase it directly from us, we would have your information. But just in case, if you wouldn't mind dropping us a note by e-mail at techsupport at Orbit Research, we'll reach out to you and get it sorted out.

Speaker 4
I sent you guys an e-mail explaining it, so you should have my e-mail.

Venkatesh Chari
Okay. Oh, that's even better. Okay, fine. Perfect. Yeah, we'll definitely address that.

Robert Carter
All right. I'm having trouble, Venkatesh, seeing who's next with a hand raised. Can you call on that person? My table isn't working properly.

Venkatesh Chari
Sure, no worries. The next person is someone with a phone number ending in 2131.

Robert Carter
Please unmute and go ahead with your question.

Speaker 5
There we go. This is Jane Corona. I have an OrbitSpeak. I have a feature request and a question. I many times use my OrbitSpeak to read podcasts because it does a really nice job with that now. I'm going through a podcast that has 1142 episodes, and I'm going from the earliest to the latest, and I'm, I'm up to 2023, so I'm, I'm getting there. Um, but sometimes when I turn it off or go to do something else and I come back to that list of episodes, it puts me back at the first one. So I have to hit, uh, space with dot one about 3000 times or some many times to to get back to where I was. But I noticed that when you look at the list of episodes, it'll tell you which ones have been played. Is there any way in settings that we could eventually have some way to only list unplayed episodes for situations where we have thousands of episodes in a in a podcast feed, and that would help. My question also, it's a different thing. I've messed up my file manager, so it's not working anymore. Can I call in on the phone and get support rather than trying to describe it via e-mail? At least maybe somebody could hear what it's doing, and rather than going back and forth with, you know, three, four, five emails, is that a feasibility? Can I call in on the 800 number and maybe get somebody to talk me through fixing my file manager because it's stuck on a file and I can't move around the file manager.

Venkatesh Chari
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely, Jane. Please call anytime. We're open from nine.

Speaker 5
As soon as this meeting is over.

Venkatesh Chari
Five Eastern time. Yeah, sure, absolutely. And we'll be happy to walk through and see what's going on and reset it for you. As far as the listing of just unplayed episodes, that's a great suggestion, Jane. Thank you for that. And we'll take it back to the engineering team. That should be, I think, relatively straightforward. And I can imagine that would be a very nice feature. We'll also look into and see why it is Taking you back to the first one, that sounds like a bug.

Speaker 5
Sometimes it leads me where I was, but sometimes it loses its mind.

Venkatesh Chari
Right, right. I understand, yeah.

Speaker 5
The next podcast feed has like 5,000 episodes, so it would be nice to have this fixed.

Venkatesh Chari
Absolutely, absolutely.

Robert Carter
I believe maybe James is next.

Venkatesh Chari
Actually, Brandon was just above in the lid.

Robert Carter
Okay, Brandon, I don't know.

Speaker 6
All right.

Robert Carter
Go ahead.

Speaker 6
Two questions. Well, three actually. One, any update on the Newsline issue I've been having since December of being able to re-log in because I could delete the service, try getting back in. It says, please wait, and it does the usual beeping, but yet I could still move around and everything. Even if I do a Z chord Z to cancel, beep, beep, beep, beep, still, even though I'm able to go other places, it still acts like I'm still waiting to log in, but yet I could still move around. So something's still up.

Venkatesh Chari
So it's, let me try to understand that a little bit better, Bren, if you don't mind. So it's not letting you navigate. once you're logged in or it's not even letting you log in.

Speaker 6
It's not merely log in. It's stuck at the please wait screen, but I can still move around the dialog and even cancel the dialog, but it still beeps as if it's still trying to log in. So even if I were to go back to the home screen, I'll still hear the three beep thing every so often as if it's still logging in. However, I can still move around the file manager, go to the utilities, go to the other apps and still hear the beep, beep, beep, beep, no matter what I do. So it's kind of...

Venkatesh Chari
That's very interesting.

Speaker 6
It's kind of both ways.

Venkatesh Chari
Right, So I'm afraid I don't have an update on whether that is one of the issues that has been fixed in this upcoming... release. Let me do this. Let me check with the team. We'll get back to you by e-mail later today. And it's possible that we might want to... Do another Zoom session like last time? Right, just to see what's going on. Because I don't know. I have not heard of this specific issue from others. I might be mistaken, but thanks. Thanks for for bringing it back to my attention and we'll address it.

Speaker 6
Well, another thing is, I know you were talking about desktop mode and keyboard support for version two. Isn't that kind of like what the optimal will do eventually with the keyboard structure and commands? Isn't that what the optimal will do in its note taker mode? Something I thought of since you introduced, since you announced it last month.

Venkatesh Chari
I'm sorry, are you talking about Orbit Speak or Orbit Player?

Speaker 6
Yeah, Orbit Speak, when it comes to a desktop keyboard emulation thing with the Orbit Speak for version two, you're talking about creating keyboards.

Venkatesh Chari
Yeah, so that'll allow you to connect an external keyboard and operate the device through the QWERTY keyboard instead of the Perkins keyboard. The Optima is, so I mean, the device remains the same, right? I mean, you know, you still have the functionality of the Orbit Speak. It's just offering an alternate input method. The Optima, on the other hand, is a complete laptop, right? So that's got a built-in QWERTY keyboard, which you can also use with a six-key Braille input mode. But that's a full laptop. That's running Windows. So they're two quite different devices.

Speaker 6
Okay, my last question is, when the public beta does become available, Will that just be a public beta cycle for version two? Or will there be a way to go into continuous public beta so even after version two comes out, you could still be part of the public beta testing?

Venkatesh Chari
So the public beta is, yeah, that's a great question, Wren. The idea behind the public beta is to is to have the release to available for people who would like to try it, but we're not going to sort of automatically install it. So typically when we do a release, you will get an automatic notification. It'll say, you know, new release is available, and then you can accept it and it will download and install it. And then we actually stop supporting previous versions and we support the latest one. In the case of the public beta, it is, the only difference is that we don't require people to download and install it. We do continue to support the previous version, which in this case would be 1.8. And then, but those who would like to encourage people, you know, they can download and install the public beta, and we still continue supporting the previous one. So it's not a mandatory thing. At some point, after a certain period that the public beta will have been out there, we will make it into a full release. And at that point, we'll stop supporting 1.8. For obvious reasons, we do want people to migrate to the latest versions as quickly as they can.

Speaker 6
What I mean, though, is after 2.0, will there be continuous public betas like public beta 2.1 or 2.2 or anything futuristic, or will it just be 2.0 and then no more public betas? That's what I mean.

Venkatesh Chari
Yeah. Right. I understand. So for major changes, we will continue to do public betas. For smaller hot fixes, smaller incremental changes, we may just keep it as a private beta and then just do a public release. So you'll probably see a combination of both.

Robert Carter
All right. Thank you, Brandon. I do appreciate all those good questions. James, please go ahead when you're ready.

Speaker 7
Good evening, everyone. Venkatesh, I'd like to come back to Bobby's question about the file manager and the time taken to refresh and so on. Now, I also noticed I don't have a terabyte SD card. No, I only have a small one, haha, small being 7 gigabytes, of books. specifically the RNIB card, which has about nearly 7000 files on it. Now, I have also noticed that sometimes there is a delay when you change folders that you can navigate apparently the previous previous folder before the list refreshes. So let's assume I'm at the root folder and I'm reading, oh, I don't know for argument's sake, books, Braille reference, music, etc. I press select on books and then I immediately press down. I will still hear Braille reference and music when I should hear adventure, autobiography, biography, etc. So there's a delay sometimes between pressing the button and changing the folder and refreshing the list. Now, I don't think that should ever, well, I don't think you should ever be able to see the previous folder once you've navigated. It should actually say wait until something or please wait. So Bobby, I'm going to ask perhaps, can you try to see, I mean, I don't know how your card is structured, but if you've got tons of stuff in your root folder, move it to a subfolder and see if that makes any difference. I don't know if that's feasible for you. My other question, which is totally separate, is, is there any news on supporting the RNIB reading services?

Venkatesh Chari
Yes. So let me, thanks, James. Let me take the RNIB. question first so yes we are we're working on the on bringing online more libraries so what we have done currently actually there's a thanks for bringing this up I had missed pointing this out so we do now have support for a a number of libraries that support the DODP protocol that's the Daisy online distribution protocol so there's 20 odd libraries uh amongst the 50 or so that uh we will eventually support that are already accessible um because they use the DODP protocol so um now I believe though unfortunately RNIB library is not um does not support DODP, it's a different protocol. And that is the support for those types of libraries depends on different authentication features, which require certain services and certain features of Android that are not readily available in 1.x, our 1.x software releases. However, with 2.0 and specifically with 2.1, we expect to make those features available, which will then open the doors for being able to support libraries like RNIB. So yeah, unfortunately, there are a couple of dependencies along the way that we are working to to resolve. So it's coming, and RNIB is not the only library like that. There are a few others as well, several others, in fact. So as soon as we have that functionality available, it'll open the doors to multiple libraries at the same time.

Speaker 7
Cool, thank you. Would you like me to report the file manager thing that I found with this folder changing?

Venkatesh Chari
Yes, please. That would be great. That definitely sounds like a bug. I think there is some state machine there that's not behaving properly.

Speaker 7
Yeah. I will test it again, and I will report that. Thank you.

Venkatesh Chari
Thank you, James.

Robert Carter
All right. If my list is tracking somewhat, I believe Pat is the next person that I see on the list. Venkatesh, do you agree?

Venkatesh Chari
Yes.

Robert Carter
Okay, Pat.

Speaker 7
Thank you. I want to ask about the Orbit Reader and the, well, the Orbit Reader 20 and the Orbit Reader 40 that you mentioned. Can you give us those dates when those updates are coming out again?

Venkatesh Chari
Yes, so the Orbit Reader 20 update is planned for 14th February and the Orbit Reader 40 is planned for the 23rd of January. Okay, thank you very much. Sure.

Robert Carter
All right, Mitch, go ahead, please.

Speaker 4
Have you thought about adding a feature, say you want to download a whole entire podcast feed to be able to do that?

Venkatesh Chari
To download an entire podcast.

Speaker 4
Yeah.

Venkatesh Chari
So it is something that has definitely come up and it is something that we are considering to offer. I know there's a couple of technical issues around that. So, but I'm glad you brought it up. It's something that we will add to our wish list. The intent is to definitely allow that.

Robert Carter
Hello, are we? Yes, you are. Are we moving forward?

Venkatesh Chari
Yeah, yeah. Well, unless there was a follow-up question from Mitch.

Speaker 4
No, that question was a follow-up to what I mentioned earlier. I forgot to mention the podcast part.

Venkatesh Chari
Right, I understand. Thanks. I think we have Bobby with his hand raised.

Robert Carter
Bobby, did you want to make another comment? I'm having some trouble lowering some of these hands after people have commented and that may be one of them. I'm not sure. Unfortunately, this table is not working well today.

Venkatesh Chari
Let me try to lower hands. Hello.

Robert Carter
Go ahead, Bobby.

Venkatesh Chari
Yes.

Robert Carter
Go ahead, Bobby. If you wanted to make a comment, please go ahead.

Venkatesh Chari
Maybe it was left up from before. Brandon has just raised his hand too, though.

Robert Carter
Okay, go ahead, Brandon.

Speaker 6
Okay. I know you guys are working on two, and I know I've asked this before in the past, but any more updates on alternative TTS? Support.

Venkatesh Chari
I'm sorry, support for.

Speaker 6
Other TTS options. Hello.

Venkatesh Chari
Oh, other TTS options. Sorry, your voice broke a little bit for me. So other TTS options, yes. So there is work that has been done. There are some voices actually that are available. I hope that in the next month or so we will have some options. that we'll be able to bring online. It's a matter of how we package and release them and get ready to support some of the newer options. So most of the heavy lifting has already been done for some of these options. But thanks, Brandon, for bringing it up.

Robert Carter
Yeah, thanks, Brandon. Let me just check and see. We've got 23 people participating here, and there may be some people who have not been able to ask a question or make a comment and they wanted to. Anybody who hasn't had a chance, please go ahead. You can unmute and let us know, or we just want to double check and make sure everybody's getting a chance to say what you want to say. My goodness, we've got a quiet group today, Venkatesh. Hello, go ahead.

Speaker 8
Sorry, this is Jean. I put this question in the chat. I really joined this group, I'm a QCVI in the UK, and I don't think we can actually get orbit readers anymore. They were supplied by the RNIB, but no longer. And I wondered if there was any moves to, I see James has now got his hand up. Are there any moves to actually make them available in the future? Because I did find them very good, but I know there were some issues on support when the Braille displays went wrong.

Speaker 7
May I answer that? Thank you, Tesh.

Venkatesh Chari
Yes, of course. Yes.

Speaker 7
So yes, I spoke to him this morning, Jane, and the guy you need to speak to is Graham Longley at Aspire Consultancy or Steve Nutt. at Computer Room Services. And if you need an e-mail address or a phone number, get in touch with me. Do you have my e-mail address? I do.

Speaker 8
I do. Yeah, I'll e-mail you after this.

Speaker 7
I'm very happy to pass it on. Now, Steve's a great guy. He's very, what's the word, enthusiastic about the Orbit Reader. He said he's sold several in recent months. And he's, yeah, definitely on sale.

Speaker 8
Okay, perfect. Thank you.

Speaker 7
Don't forget the RNIB card of books, which is still available, as far as I know, from RNIB.

Speaker 8
Great. Thank you.

Venkatesh Chari
So, Jean, yeah, we had a period where we didn't have sales or support as we were transitioning. But for, I think, over a year now, the We have three distributors now, as James mentioned, Aspire Consultancy and Computer Room Services, and also Sight and Sound carries our Slate, Orbit Slate products. Aspire Consultancy can also do repairs, so they're fully equipped to do repairs for the Orbit Reader 20. So you should have really good sales and support. As James mentioned, Both Steve as well as Graham are very enthusiastic about the products. We've had some really great experiences ever since they came on board as distributors.

Speaker 8
So did you say Sight and Sound can offer support?

Venkatesh Chari
Sight and Sound carries only our Orbit Slate products. OK, who was it you said? Sorry, beg your pardon.

Speaker 8
Who was it you said could offer support?

Venkatesh Chari
For repairs, Aspire Consultancy, which is Graham Longley, they can also repair. So if you have arbitrators that need repair, please connect with him. And you can also find contact information on our website. If you go to our website, go to About Us, and you'll see a link to Global Distributors. and all of them are listed there as well.

Speaker 8
Okay, thank you very much.

Venkatesh Chari
Very welcome.

Robert Carter
All right, thank you for that. Wow, sounds like a lot going on in the UK right now. Bobby, are you wanting to come back in? Okay.

Speaker 3
Hello.

Robert Carter
Hello.

Speaker 3
Robert.

Robert Carter
Yes.

Speaker 3
Can you hear me?

Robert Carter
Yes, can you hear me?

Speaker 3
Yeah, if I understood correctly, Does the update for the Orbit Player that fixes, you know, the little glitches, does that come out tomorrow or Thursday?

Venkatesh Chari
So for Orbit Player, it comes out tomorrow.

Speaker 3
Oh, sounds good.

Venkatesh Chari
For the Orbit Speak, it comes out day after.

Speaker 3
Okay, thank you for clearing that up with me. Just making sure.

Robert Carter
All right, thank you, Bobby. Duane, please unmute yourself and go ahead when you're ready.

Speaker 4
Yes, I'm sorry, I'm having trouble with my Zoom, but how about how is board support coming along on the orbit player and what about the ultimate? How is it coming along?

Venkatesh Chari
Thanks. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for that, Dwayne, for that question. Yeah, I should have provided an update on that also. So yes, there has been progress, positive progress on the BARD front. We're looking at a couple of different alternatives. We've been in close contact with the Library of Congress. And the part of the work is going to happen as part of release two that'll enable us to provide certain aspects of BART support, and we're also looking at sort of a fully integrated experience, which we are in discussions with the NLS about. So I just want folks to know that it is something that we are working on as we speak. We know it's really, really important to our U.S. customers, and we are committed to making it available.

Robert Carter
All right. Well, I know a lot of people are looking forward to that. You see any more hands at the moment, Venkatesh?

Venkatesh Chari
No, I think other than Dwayne.

Robert Carter
Yeah, I don't either. Anybody else? James, go ahead.

Speaker 7
I think Bobby was just about to speak as well. I've said a lot already. Bobby, go ahead.

Venkatesh Chari
I think there was someone with the phone number ending in 2131.

Speaker 7
That's Jane Corona.

Speaker 5
That's me again. I think the other question that the other person was asking was about the Optima. And I'm really interested now that HumanWare is going to be coming out with the Evolve, which is also a Windows 11 PC, and there's going to be a 40 cell Braille display with a QWERTY keyboard when it comes out. I'm interested in the comparisons between the two, and I'm wondering myself when, because I'm going to get one or the other of them, I'm going to get something. So I'm tired of my BI-40, doesn't do what I want to do. So I'm interested myself in where we are with the Optima.

Venkatesh Chari
Yes, so we have been making actually now again some faster progress with the Optima. There's been various aspects both on the technical side and financial side that have moved forward. So there's renewed momentum. I think that's the best way to describe it. In terms of when we would have it available, I wouldn't want to give a firm date because there's still some factors which are not fully in our control, but our hope is that by the end of this year, we would have it. We are going to show a couple of new aspects at CSUN, and I think people will find that very exciting. These will still be pre-production models that we'll show at CSUN. And but hopefully by the end of this year, we will have either have production units or be very close to that. In terms of a comparison, it's difficult to do a fair comparison at this time. You know, these are they're both, you know, complex devices. I think they both are aiming to do very similar things in that they are laptops. I think probably one major difference is that our philosophy with the Optima is to have full configurability and upgradeability even after you have purchased the device. So we are aiming for the modular approach where you'll be able to upgrade not only things like memory and storage, but also even the processor and the motherboard. So I think that's probably a major differentiator. As a result, you can also choose the level of performance and the level of cost you know, at purchase time or in the ability to upgrade performance at a later time. So I think that's probably going to be a very, very important factor.

Robert Carter
Yeah, it is exciting.

Venkatesh Chari
You'll also have a choice, right? You'll have a choice of Braille cells as well, you know, our true Braille cells with the Orbit modules as well as PSO.

Robert Carter
Let's go back to James.

Speaker 4
I ain't take a shower yet.

Speaker 7
I ain't take a shower yet.

Robert Carter
James, you want to go ahead?

Venkatesh Chari
Okay.

Speaker 7
All right, when I can find the right window, I apologize, folks.

Robert Carter
Yeah, I know how it goes.

Speaker 7
I've got far too many windows open and it's January. Sorry. Poor joke. Thank you, Tesh. I know you mentioned the API for the graffiti. Did you also mention at one stage the hope to publish the API for the speak stroke player?

Venkatesh Chari
The remind me, James, are you referring to an API to connect and control the speak and player?

Speaker 7
To create, sorry, to create apps and so on.

Venkatesh Chari
Oh, oh, so you mean the SDK?

Speaker 7
Yes, sorry, SDK, yes, yes.

Venkatesh Chari
Okay, okay, okay.

Speaker 7
Which contains lots of APIs, yes.

Venkatesh Chari
Yes, indeed, indeed. So yes, that is still the plan. So version two is sort of the first step towards that.

Speaker 7
Yes.

Venkatesh Chari
And some of the features that fundamental architectural features that will be part of version two will enable that kind of an SDK as well. And it will enable various things or give us the ability to then bring on various things such as potentially side loading and things like that. Again, we want to be cautious.

Speaker 7
Of course, of course.

Venkatesh Chari
Yes. We want people to buy these devices for what they are and what they are being advertised to do out-of-the-box. And because there are, as we have discussed previously, there are many things that are in the ecosystem that are not in our control. And they come from Android, they come from third parties, there are technical and commercial aspects. So we just want to caution folks, if some of those things that are not there today are really important to you, please wait and make sure that they are there before you go and purchase a unit.

Speaker 7
Thank you.

Venkatesh Chari
Sure. All right, we have Mitch with the hand raised and then Brandon.

Speaker 7
Go ahead, Mitch.

Speaker 4
Hey, Vagatas, can you even describe the prototype for the case that you got? Yeah, sure. And after CSUN, you think you or Adi could go on Larry Gassman's tech talk that he does on Monday nights and talk about the new OS for the Orbit player?

Venkatesh Chari
Sure, yeah. Yeah, we've been on it a few times and I would love to go on it again, yes. So yeah, so to describe the case, yeah, I'm happy to do that. So it is a flip type case. So the Orbit player, there's a metal, so first it's a leather, natural leather case. There is a metal clip that the unit snaps into. and it's held rigidly. And there's a backside. Everything is leather, and even the metal is leather covered. And then there's a backside, a topside, and a front side. The front side sort of flips open. It's got a magnetic latch. And the sides are open. So the left and right side are open. So you can easily access volume controls, the SD card slot, and the USB charging port. It has an opening for the headphone jack and also openings for the microphone and speaker. It's got a into hooks on the sides where you can attach a lanyard or a strap. So it will come with a strap. And yeah, that's it's it's it's it's very simple. It's it's actually quite it does make the unit more bulky, obviously, since, you know, it is intended to be to give pretty good protection and also prevent inadvertent key presses. So the leather is, it is rigid. It's got an internal board that makes it rigid, so it prevents accidental key presses. So price has not yet been set. We hope, again, by season time that we'll have all of those details worked out.

Robert Carter
All right, nice to hear a description of that thing. Brandon, you will be our last participant. If you would go ahead and unmute with your question or comment, please.

Speaker 6
All right, can you guys hear me okay?

Robert Carter
Yes, go ahead.

Speaker 6
I got two quick questions. One, will there be a little teaser on what engines will be supported before they are? That way people can get a feel for what to expect. And #2, I noticed with the keyboards of older devices, Dots 7 and 8 usually look like the original, the dot, the first dots, the first six dots on a Perkins keyboard. Why the change in dot 7 and 8 for Orbit products, you know, not looking like the original six dots? Just curious.

Venkatesh Chari
I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I followed the second question fully.

Speaker 6
What I mean is you look at, you look at stuff like the Orbit Writer keyboard.

Venkatesh Chari
Right.

Speaker 6
And you have the original 6 dots. Dots 7 and 8 are shaped differently than the first six. Why the change? Just curious.

Venkatesh Chari
So the keyboard actually comes from the original Orbit Reader 20. And In the form factor of the 20 at that time, the width was such that it really permitted only six dots in a row without making it much bigger. And since there is, of course, a need for dots seven and eight, we put them beside the space bar, into the left and right of the space bar. And since we had developed that keyboard, that keyboard design continued and we reused that design on other products such as the Orbit Writer and then the Orbit Speak as well. When we developed the Orbit Reader 40, that was a very different form factor. One, we had quite a bit of length because of the 40 cells, so we had horizontal space available. And we wanted to make the vertical size or in front to back size smaller. So we decided to lay out the all 8 keys sort of in a row. And so it's got a different layout. We were also able to sort of give the keys a curved layout so that, it dress more easily on the, and it follows the sort of natural curve of your fingertips. So that's really the reason why the keyboards are the way they are.

Speaker 6
Okay. And as far as the TTS question, will there be like a little teaser of what to expect when it comes to listening to what will be supported in the future, or will we just get the news of it on the list?

Venkatesh Chari
Well, at this point, I think we will just announce it and make it available at the same time. And of course, we'll also have samples available. But there's still a couple of details to be worked out, on the commercial aspects. And so that's why we haven't really made any announcements yet.

Robert Carter
All right. Thank you, Brandon. And Doug, you have your hand up, I believe. So go ahead and unmute yourself and you'll you will be our final participant. Go ahead, please. Doug, are you able to unmute and go ahead with your comment or question? Venkatesh, we have done our best. Apologies for my problems with the table. I hope this will get solved soon. It must be a voiceover bug on the Mac or Zoom or somebody's bug, but it's been crazy today. Thank you for helping out with it.

Venkatesh Chari
No worries. You're very welcome. Thank you very much, Robert, for organizing this. As always, it's a real pleasure. Thanks, everyone, for attending and for the Great questions and feedback.

Robert Carter
Yep. And we will look forward to seeing everybody sometime in February, probably closer to the end. Thanks, everybody. Have a good day. So long for now.

Venkatesh Chari
Thanks. Take care. Bye-bye.