Audio file OrbitResearchJune2026ZoomMeeting.mp3 Transcript [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 Good morning, everyone. This is Robert. I'm the host of this meeting. It's a monthly meeting with Venkatesh Chari of Orbit Research, and we are very happy to be here with you all this morning. Hard to believe we're already in the month of June, but that we are. And so It's going to be a busy summer for me and I suspect for you all as well and for Orbit Research in particular. So Venkatesh, if you would please unmute yourself and give us any update that you may have on what's going on this month at Orbit Research. Venkatesh Chari Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Robert, for having me. Thanks, everyone, for joining. It has indeed been a very busy period for us. Basically starting March until the end of July remains our busiest time of the year, primarily due to the conferences and conventions starting with CSUN and then moving on to the summer NFB and ACB conventions in this year, AER as well. Speaking of which, we will be at all three of those. Next month, NFB convention is in the first and second week of July. ACB is, I believe, in the third week, 3rd and 4th weeks, and AER is at the very end of the month. AER is in Louisville, Kentucky, ACB in St. Louis, and NFB in Austin, Texas. So we have been very busy with development for the most part. Last month, we prepared new releases for the Graffiti Plus, a number of improvements. This is due to be released this week. Also for the Orbit Writer, where we have added a quick navigation command which allows VoiceOver users to navigate between items such as headings, links, et cetera. And so this is going to be available by the, probably also by the end of this week. There are additional new releases planned for the Orbitrator 20. and rather 20 plus where we have support for the updated translation libraries for liblui, which includes now support for new or rather improved support for Indian languages. Also some additional updates planned for graffiti plus as well as graffiti. On the Orbit Player and Orbit Speak, we had planned to do a public release of version 2 for the Orbit Speak. This has been delayed slightly. We did have a beta release out and that has been going through extensive testing. Thanks all the beta testers for on the call and those who are not on the call. There was a lot of really good feedback. So we have been incorporating fixes and improvements. The main reason for a bit of delay was due to the system-wide braille support on the OrbitSpeak and OrbitSpeak Plus. While much of this worked, there were several edge cases where behavior was not as expected. And we want to make sure that the user experience is really, really smooth when we do do the public release. So public release is now slated for the 15th of June. And we are going to continue to test in the meantime to try to make this as smooth as possible. So this will be release 2.1. As we had indicated in previous calls, we have now transitioned to a common code base where all the functionality and features of the Orbit speak and the Orbit player are now in sync. So as we add new features, new fixes, et cetera, they'll be reflected in both. And for the most part, we'll be making releases for both the products at the same time. So around the same date, 15th of June, we'll also have a release for the Orbit player. The changes or the improvements are as we had described last time. So in addition to the bug fixes and the system-wide braille support, there are improvements to the organization of the home screen to improve application discoverability and ease of use. Bookmarks in the media player and podcast applications will be supported. The file picker has been improved, make it easier to use. We also have added the ability to play files from the media player without having to add them to the library. And also you'll be able to choose the default app that you want at device startup when you're starting from a cold start. We have also been making progress on the development of the new products which we had announced during CSUN in March. So the Orbit Flow 40, which is our simple display only device, that is slated to start shipping by the end of this month. We have three production samples now. We showed them at Site City. Response to these was really, really great, very, very positive. And so we really look forward-looking forward to it. strong launch in the coming months. The Strata 40 is also nearing completion of development. Also had a very good reception at Site City. So that'll be coming sometime in August, September time frame, followed by the pro models there in the year. So it has been a really, really busy time with the conferences. Overall, Site City was, let's say, very, very positive conference, great reception to our new products as well as our existing ones. We have continued work on the carrying cases also for, especially for the player. There's been a longstanding request for this. We have actually got some prototypes that we have sent out to various folks, gotten some really good feedback in the process of tuning the design based on the feedback, and hopefully we'll have it in the next three months or so. Support for Bard is always a popular question. So I want to give a quick update about that. We have made some really good progress. And as I had indicated last time, we are on track to having sort of the first phase of the app available in time for the conventions. And this will be on both the products, the Orbit Speed Plus, as well as the Orbit Player. I think that's pretty much all I have for now, Robert. I'll hand the microphone back to you. Robert Carter All right. Well, thank you for that update. Busy time, and I know how busy the summers are. My goodness, I remember those convention days. Dennis, you have your hand raised. Please unmute yourself and go ahead with a comment or question. Speaker 3 Hi, Venkatesh. I have two questions. Last May, you said you were doing work on the Orbit Rider and all the work was done. All that had to be done was the units put into production for the USBC and that work would take place early this year. What is the status of that? Are there any other improvements besides USB-C and when can we expect the product to be released? Venkatesh Chari Sure. Thanks. Thanks for checking in on that, Dennis. So yes, the development work has been completed and we have shared some prototype pieces with folks in the community. And it's a simple change. The USB socket has been changed. So even though from the user's perspective, it's a straightforward thing, from the manufacturing perspective, it requires a pretty significant change to the electronics as well as to the plastics. So those changes from a development perspective have been done in terms of actually deploying to the field. We are essentially gated by shipping and finishing shipping of the inventory we have in stock for the current model. Once we complete that, then we'll be able to begin manufacturing of the updated model which has the the USB-C port. So it's hard to predict an exact date because it depends on sales volumes, etc. At this point, I anticipate it'll probably be around the end of the year, perhaps a little bit later. As you can imagine, we have to deplete what we have in stock before we can manufacture and procure materials and manufacture a new batch. That said, we have continued to work on improvements. As you know, there was a release several weeks back that added support for improved vibration. We're just about to release this, another release with the support for additional voiceover commands. Other than these, there are no other changes planned at the moment for the Orbit Rider. There have been questions, understandably so, about battery capacity. At the moment, we don't have any plans to change the battery. There are various technical limitations at the moment. That said, we continue to explore ways to make further improvements and your feedback and feedback of the community is always very, very welcome. Speaker 3 I know a lot of people are looking forward to USBC. So the sooner we can get that in the community, I understand where you're coming from. the better. That's how I look at it. USB-C is the standard now. Micro is not. And the sooner we move to that standard, the better. It makes it easier across product lines. And you know, everything's using the same standard. People want to say, well, what, you know, I'm buying this new product, this product. then I'll have to guess what cable do I have to use. Venkatesh Chari Absolutely. And trust me, we feel the same way. And we have steadily moved to. towards that, towards the adoption of USB-C across all our products. So in fact, as of a couple months ago, all of the Orbit Reader 20 models have already undergone the upgrade to USB-C. The Orbit Reader is next. We are also evaluating how and when we can convert our calculator products, those really being the last of the product families that still have non-USBC sockets. Speaker 3 All right, I look forward to it. Thank you. Robert Carter All right, thank you, Dennis. Mitch, you have your hand raised. Please unmute and go ahead when you're ready. Speaker 3 What were you going to say, Venkatesh? Venkatesh Chari Sorry, I was just going to say I want to give a shout out to Dennis. Dennis has been extremely supportive and has also been working on preparing a series of tutorials, which we have for the Orbit Writer, which we have posted on our website. So thanks very much, Dennis. And folks, please do have a look and make use of those tutorials. that your friends know that these are now available. These are the first in a series of tutorials showing various aspects and use cases of the Orbit Rider. Speaker 3 You're welcome. I enjoy doing it. It's a pleasure to serve the community and help people. And that's my goal. If I can help one person, I've done my job. Venkatesh Chari Thank you. Robert Carter Excellent. Well, thank you for that, Dennis. That's awesome. Mitch, please unmute yourself and go ahead when you're ready. Speaker 3 Yeah. Speaker 4 I have a folder with a large number of files, 17, 19 for the number. And when I do the select all in the media player, it says cannot select all files. They're all audio files. Venkatesh Chari This is on the Orbit player. Speaker 4 Yep. Venkatesh Chari Okay. So you're in a folder, you're trying to select all. It does let you select, but doesn't execute the selection on the selection. Speaker 4 It says cannot select all files. Venkatesh Chari Cannot select. I see. I see. That is interesting. Let me check on that and get back to you. Mitch, would you mind please just dropping a one line e-mail after this call? We can get back to you and we can check on it in detail. Robert Carter Okay. All right. Well, thank you for that. I'm sorry, Venkatesh. Venkatesh Chari No, I somehow the audio cut out on my side, so I couldn't hear what Mitch said at the end. Robert Carter Did you did you get the message, Mitch, to send a brief e-mail? Venkatesh Chari Yeah, I got it. Robert Carter Okay, great. Thank you. All right, Bobby, please unmute yourself and go ahead. Speaker 5 Hey, Robert, can you guys hear me? Robert Carter Yeah, you're good. Speaker 5 Yeah, I'm very excited that you're going to be bringing Bard to the table for the Orbit player because our devices, you know, don't have it yet from Orbit. And I'm wondering when the release date for that release will happen. Venkatesh Chari Yeah, so we are very excited as well, and we want to thank our users for being so patient. It has taken a lot longer than we had originally anticipated. This will be at convention time, so we're going to try to have it in early July, but At most, it'll be end of July. We just want to make sure that it is well tested. In almost all cases, library access has been, for each library, each one has had unique challenges that we've had to tackle. So we're just being very cautious. We understand how important Bard is, and we want to make sure users have a really good experience. So at this point, we expect definitely before the end of July, which is next month. Speaker 5 Okay, and I have another question. Am I still on? Venkatesh Chari Yes, you are. Go ahead. Speaker 5 Are you ever going to implement some of the apps that are on iPhone and Android, like for example, the Amazon Alexa app and the Sirius XM. Venkatesh Chari Yeah, that's a very good question, Bobby. What I can certainly say is that it is something that we are actively looking at. There are several challenges related to that, one being technical, making sure that technically these can be implemented. The second and more tricky one is the commercial aspect. So as unlike most of our other apps, which are entirely under our control, developed internally, these require various commercial arrangements with the providers, right? Amazon in the case of Alexa and Sirius. So we certainly wish to provide these at some point in time. We have been exploring and hopefully we'll have some news soon. It's a little early for me to project any specific dates because there are still quite a few unknowns on both commercial and technical side. But I can tell you that we are exploring seriously. Speaker 5 Oh, well, thank you. Thank you for the information and I'll look out for that. Robert Carter Thank you, Bobby. Terry Ann, please unmute when you're willing and able and go ahead. Speaker 6 Good morning, everybody. Good morning, Venkatesh. Venkatesh Chari Good morning, Terry Ann. Speaker 6 I hope to see you in St. Louis. Venkatesh Chari I do too. I'm glad to hear you'll be coming. Speaker 6 Yeah. Two things. Number one, is there going to be for the Orbit player, is there going to be a sleep mode implemented for that? Venkatesh Chari So the answer is yes. There is a sleep, there are actually, well, depending on how you define sleep, so there is a sleep mode already, which is sort of like your phone's sleep mode, where when you press the power key, it basically goes into lock screen, it's kind of asleep, it still does a few things in the background. In our case, it doesn't really do much in the background. It consumes a very, very small amount of power, and it can stay in that mode for days and weeks, essentially. That is actually the a typical usage method that you wouldn't really fully power it down. You would just press a power button and a short press on it puts it into sleep mode. And then when you press it again, a short press will wake it up and instantly bring you back to where you were, much like your phone. Separately from that, there are There's also sleep timer functionality where you can set it so that it kind of, you know, if you're reading a book or listening to music, it can go to sleep after a predetermined interval. Speaker 6 Right. I think that's the one I'm referring to. Yeah. okay. Venkatesh Chari Okay. Speaker 6 And so is that one is already there now. Venkatesh Chari I believe it's already there yet. It's been there for some time. Have you tried it and it hasn't worked? Speaker 6 Well, I have not. And I was actually at this moment, I was asking for a friend because she seemed to think that it what isn't there and wondered when it was going to be there. I have not tried it myself. I will, but she was asking when it was going to be updated or something there. And I believe it was for the. Venkatesh Chari I'll double check it. Speaker 6 Orbit player, yeah. And the other thing was that is it possible for those who have an Orbit Rider now with the USB mini port, could you use if there is such a thing, a USB mini to a USB-C adapter, could you plug an adapter in there and then be able to use a USB-C cable? Venkatesh Chari To connect it to a phone or... Speaker 6 So for those people who are looking for the USB-C port, that will be coming. Could you put a plug in adapter into that USB mini port and then be able to use a USB-C cable? Venkatesh Chari Oh, yes, absolutely. In fact, yeah, thanks for bringing that up, Terry-Ann. That is absolutely possible. And in fact, one of the things that we can suggest to folks who want to go this route, there are many, many magnetic USB cables available, and most of them come with a set of tips, including Micro B, which is the type of connector we have on the Orbit Rider, and USB-C and others, Mini B, for instance. Mini B is much less common now, though. So with one of those, you actually can kind of solve both problems, where you can just simply use your magnetic cable attached to it and be able to just pull on it and disconnect it. So you kind of avoid the sort of directionality issue of the micro B connector. To your point specifically, yes, there are tiny little adapter plugs available which will convert from one to the other type. So that there, in fact, I have a couple for my own use that convert from USB-C to micro B. Speaker 6 Yeah, I said Minnie and I meant, yes, the micro B. So for Dennis, I think it was and he may have left, unfortunately, but I just thought of that and so thought I would just pose that question. So thank you very much. Venkatesh Chari Actually, Cherian, I do have an update in my colleagues who are listening to the call updated me. So the sleep timer to shut it off while listening is available, but it needs to be set from the settings menu. And in version 2.1, which is the upcoming release in a couple of weeks, It will be also settable or accessible through a hotkey in addition to the settings menu. Speaker 6 Oh, great. Venkatesh Chari Yeah, so it's. Speaker 6 That will be June 15th, I think you said. Venkatesh Chari Yes, June 15th. Speaker 6 Excellent. Thank you so much. Venkatesh Chari You're welcome. Robert Carter All right. Thank you, Terry Ann. Ken, please unmute yourself and go ahead when you're ready. Speaker 4 Hey, what's up? Robert Carter Go ahead. Speaker 4 I would just wanted to say that I was just going to make a comparison only because I've heard about how the inspirer from him has apps, but I guess they had to go through like some sort of thing when they did it. So, I don't know, I was just, I was just going to say that the Sense player has apps, but I'm sure you guys would have to go through some other kind of route. Venkatesh Chari Did you mean to be able to load apps into the devices? Wait, you mean do you mean like Android apps? Speaker 4 I was basically saying that I've heard that the Sense player has their own app installer. Because I heard what someone said earlier about the Orbit player having apps. Venkatesh Chari So, yes, we, the apps that are currently available on the Orbit player are all developed to natively work on the OrbitPlayer or OrbitSpeak platform. So they are, from the ground up, designed to be an audio-first user interface and a tactile user interface, you know, using a keypad or a Braille keyboard. So they're very specifically designed to be very user-friendly. That said, since it's an Android platform, it is of course possible for us to load standard Android apps and use a screen reading service, a screen reading program to make them accessible. Going forward, there will be some apps of that type that we will fully test and ensure that they do work robustly, even with a screen reader interface. That interface will obviously necessarily be different from our native UIs. It'll be a slightly different experience, but the apps will still, the intent will be to make them still very, very usable and as user-friendly as possible, given that they were not designed to be a an audio first type of app. It will, in general, it's not our plan to kind of completely open up the platforms that you can download or side load apps into it. We are constantly actually considering this, thinking through it, and trying to weigh the pros and cons. At the moment, We don't have any immediate plans to kind of make it a completely open platform like that. So, but that said, we, based on a demand from the user community, we will of course be continually evaluating which apps, which sort of off-the-shelf apps to bring in, which apps to develop ourselves. And there are a number of factors that will play into that, ranging from complexity, the amount of effort required, whether or not there are sort of third-party licensing issues, cost issues, et cetera. Speaker 4 All right, well, I can't wait for that Orbit Speak update on the 15th. Speaker 7 I can't wait for that. Venkatesh Chari Thanks. Robert Carter All right. Well, thank you, Ken. Raheel, please unmute yourself and go ahead. Speaker 7 Okay. I was wondering what the price would be for a convention for the Orbit Reader 20 and could I use the O cord For option, like to do the create a file with the Orbiter 20. Venkatesh Chari So I believe in the Orbiter 20, the, excuse me, the command for creating a new file is called N for new. I'll have to check and see if there are. other commands, sometimes certain commands have multiple commands to execute. So, and as far as the prices for the Orbitrator 20 for the convention, we are gonna have some promotions, but I would like to take this opportunity to remind folks about our the special program that we have, that we have launched back in March with OSAP, a voice especially-abled people, LA-based non-profit, through which there is a subsidy which allows you to get an Orbit Reader 20 for-. Speaker 7 Wait, what is that again? OSAP? What's that? Venkatesh Chari WhatsApp is a non-profit. It stands for Voice of Specially Abled People. And they offer a subsidy on the Orbit Reader 20, the Orbit Reader 20 Plus, and the Orbit Player. Speaker 7 So how do you spell it? V-O-I-C-E. Venkatesh Chari Yeah, Voice of. specially enabled people. So voice app, VOSAP, V O S A T. And I can give you the link for it. I'll give it to you at the end of this call. I should have it. Well, it is www dot OSAP dot Org slash apply devices. So a LYDICS. Okay. Speaker 7 Will this be sold in person at NFB convention? Venkatesh Chari No, this is available actually through their website. So actually, let me give you the link. Speaker 7 Well, no, what I mean is Will the Orbit Reader 20 be sold in person at National Convention? Venkatesh Chari Oh, I see what you mean. No, we typically do not sell, physically sell at the convention. So we do have convention specials, but they are available either through our website or by calling us. So yeah, we do not typically. Speaker 7 So if I call, I wouldn't be able to pick it up in person? Is that how it works? Venkatesh Chari No, we would ship it to you. We would ship them to you. Speaker 7 Okay. Venkatesh Chari And shipping is typically free if you order through our website or through the phone. So we will ship it to you. We typically at the booth, things are pretty crazy. We don't really have the ability to. Speaker 7 Why? Because I spoke to Ashish, the someone on the phone and they say, yeah, that we tell in person, but I want to be able to pick it up at the convention, make it easy on myself. Venkatesh Chari Yeah, unfortunately, we will not be able to do that. It's also in certain states, there are Various tax related issues. So no, unfortunately we can't do that. Speaker 7 Okay. And VOSAP is VOSAP. Venkatesh Chari Yeah, that is the abbreviation. But let me give you the link again. I think I made a mistake. So the URL to go to is voice of SAP dot org. So VOICEOFSAP dot org slash apply devices. And when you go there, you'll see a country selection. There'll be two entries. One is for India, one is for the US. Just click on US. It'll take you to a short description of the program and a form where basically just enter your name and e-mail address. And then they will register you, take some basic information, and then let you know about the next steps. So I think all it requires is name, e-mail, and a phone number. Robert Carter Okay, thank you. Shankatesh, is that a link for a voice app available on the Orbit Research website also. Venkatesh Chari Yes, it is. It is actually. So if you go to our website at the very top of our homepage, there is actually sort of a banner at the very top and that links to that webpage. Robert Carter Okay, just want to make sure people could access it easily so you can get it from the website. If you need to hear it again, you can get the recording from Richard's website and hear it again, but just important for people to be able to access that site. Venkatesh Chari That's right. That's right. Yeah. So if that link is a little tricky to remember, yeah, please just go to orbitresearch.com. At the very top, you'll see an announcement saying announcing a new subsidy program for Braille and reading devices in the US. And if you click on that, will take you to that page. Robert Carter Excellent. All right, Brandon, please unmute and talk to us when you're ready. Speaker 8 Yeah, can you guys hear me okay? Robert Carter Yeah, we hear you fine. Go ahead. Speaker 8 Yeah. Will you guys be demonstrate, or not demonstrating, but will you be bringing the new devices to the various conferences like the NFB or ECB? Venkatesh Chari Yes, absolutely, Brandon. We have already been showing them at CSUN and Site City. So absolutely we will have them. The OrbitFlow will already be shipping by then. And yeah, so we didn't have a working prototype of the OrbitFlow at CSUN, but we did have them as well as pre-production units at Site City. And we'll definitely be showing them both the Strata 40 as well as the OrbitFlow 40 will be at both the conventions. Speaker 8 Also, will there be commands on the newer displays like the Strata 20 Pro and 40 Pro too? So if you want to just read or listen only, will you be able to turn off braille or speech independently. Venkatesh Chari Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, you'll be able to do that. Speaker 8 And one more question and a suggestion. When it comes to checking for updates in the future, since you could do software updates from settings, will there be a mechanism to update built-in apps independently of this? Or is it only software updates for everything? Venkatesh Chari So the intent is to definitely allow updating only what is needed. one of the issues right now is, or in release one, was that everything was together. So there was one image that included the operating system and the core functionality as well as all the applications. So this is what has, this has been one of the fundamental changes in architecture with release 2. And yes, absolutely, you'll be able to update just the apps that need updates. Speaker 8 And also with the Orbit Rider, I thought of an idea. Maybe use kind of like what you got for the casing of the speak since I had C already. Just take off the other keys that aren't needed, slim it down, and there you go. Orbit Rider or USB-C? Venkatesh Chari Indeed, indeed. Yes, and you can then also have a much larger battery with the space. Now, it's as I was mentioning, the engineering... Speaker 8 Yeah, forgot about the battery part. Venkatesh Chari Yeah, the engineering work has already been done, and it's now a question of when do we transition the manufacturing, you know, in which that's gonna happen as soon as we are, you know, we have shipped the existing model. Speaker 8 No, I forgot about the battery part. Robert Carter All right. Thank you, Brandon. Bobby Vinton, please unmute and go ahead. Bobby, are you there, sir? Venkatesh Chari Maybe the hand was from before. Robert Carter Okay, I think we got you now, Bobby. Go ahead. Speaker 5 Okay. I don't know if this is a bug or not, but when I set my voice parameters, this doesn't happen all the time. It's like very intermittent. When I reboot, like let's say I set the voice to like 8%, the voice rate, and I reboot the device, sometimes it doesn't save my voice settings. But it doesn't happen all the time. Venkatesh Chari I see that. Sounds like a bug. It is definitely supposed to retain all of the settings. This is for which product? Is it the Speak or? Speaker 5 No, the Orbit Player. Venkatesh Chari Okay, I'll have to look into that. And you said it's intermittent and it happens when you restart the device that it doesn't retain. Speaker 5 Yeah, but the strange thing is it's hard to reproduce because it doesn't happen all the time. Venkatesh Chari Right, that is often the nature of bugs. So thanks for bringing that to our attention, Bob. We'll definitely run some exhaustive tests. And if you come across a method to reproduce it, please do let us know, drop us an e-mail. But we'll definitely check it out. Speaker 5 I mean, if it would happen like on a regular basis, I could easily reproduce it, but I can't. Venkatesh Chari Is it only the speed or are there other parameters also that... Speaker 5 Oh no, it's only the speed of the voice. The rate. Okay, yeah, The speech rate is what you call it. Venkatesh Chari The speech rate, yeah, Okay, I will definitely check that out. Speaker 5 And are you thinking of putting in, I know you're thinking about adding some voices. You said that a couple of months ago, but are you thinking of adding the voices for that were a narrator like Jenny and what are the other ones? Aria. Venkatesh Chari So we're looking at a few different synthesizers, and some of these are are actually, they are licensed, so they're paid. And, I'd love to actually get your feedback, from all of you, if there is a voice or a TTS that has a cost associated with it, do you feel people, users would be willing to pay for a voice? Speaker 5 Yeah, like for example, I mean, I would if you could possibly put eloquence in there. Venkatesh Chari Okay. Speaker 5 Unless is eloquence available for voice or no? Venkatesh Chari I believe eloquence is currently not available. It is something that people have asked for. It is something that we are trying to see and how we can make it available, but at the moment it's not. Speaker 5 Because, I mean, I would not be willing to pay for Eloquence because it's, you know, it's, they don't develop it anymore. But even though they don't, JAWS and NVDA and Code Factory for some crazy reason are still using, I love Eloquence and I like to see you put it in the Orbit player and other Orbit products. But since you're not developing anymore, what's the sense in making it a paid product? Venkatesh Chari Right, exactly. And this is kind of the big question, right? each of the voices, TTS voices, it requires an effort to port it and test it. And in many cases, these are, Paid right, so we have to pay the developer of the voice, and consequently we would need to potentially charge our users. So, the question is, there a big enough demand for such voices to go through all of that work? And there's a lot of, as you can imagine, administrative work as well, right? Keeping track, making sure that the release is properly going to the people who have purchased it, and the billing aspect. So quite, and that's really one of the main reasons why we have not yet released some of the things where in some cases development is even done. So we'll continue to work on it. We'd love to have inputs on which voices are desirable. I hear what you're saying about eloquence. Speaker 5 Yeah, and you get the same voices, like you get Reed, Shelly, Bobby, they don't seem to ever, ever change voices or add voices. So what's the point? I love it, but what's the point in paying for it when you're just going to hear the same sound? I mean, freedom's scientific. Nobody charges for it anymore. Robert Carter All right, we got a couple more hands. Thank you, Bobby. We're going to move forward. But yeah, it's an interesting dilemma about the TTSs and what to do about them. Dwayne, you've had your hand up for a while. Please unmute and go ahead when you're ready. Speaker 4 Yeah. I like eloquence too. I was wondering about the Orbit Rider as far as updating it. Have you thought about an app for the iPhone when you could update your Orbit Rider that way? Just out of curiosity. Thanks. Venkatesh Chari Yeah, we actually have. That would be very nice to have. There's no question. There are technical issues that make it quite a challenge to do that. It has to do with how iOS treats Bluetooth interfaces. It also has to do with how the system software on our device can be updated through the Bluetooth interface. So there are There are some complexities involved there. It's something that we continue to look. We have some ideas. I'm really glad to hear that it would be something interesting and attractive. So we'll take it back to the team and see whether this is feasible in the short term. Robert Carter All right. Thank you, Dwayne. Matthew, please unmute and go ahead when you're ready, sir. Speaker 9 All right. Hello. Nice to be here. Yeah, I'm unmuted. That's great. I've got a real edge case question for you. And I'm in two minds as to whether to bring it up here, to be honest, or whether to write to you privately about it. But I'll bring it up here first. I was given an Orbit reader, Lenton Orbit reader, should I say, because I was intrigued by the idea of the HID keyboard mode, thinking of situations where I'm away from the computer with a, say, a Bluetooth headset on or something, and I need to be able to very quickly mute myself on Zoom or turn the volume, obviously, to the volume up and down on the headset. But you just want to do something really quickly on the computer, but you don't really want to be rushing back up to do it. And they're usually really simple things like mute and unmute if the headset doesn't have a mute button. So I've been playing around with it and it's working reasonably well, but I've discovered that the Alt key is on space and.2. And when I press space and.2, it sends the Alt key, but it also sends whatever key is attached to.2, which is the number one. So if I press space and.2 by itself, I get Alt 1. If I press space and dots 1 and 2, I get Alt B. And if I press space with any letter, you know, that involves.2, then you're fine. So space with J will give me Alt J and space with L will give me Alt L. But if I want to do Alt by itself, or if I want to do alt with a letter that doesn't have.2, so in this case, alt A to mute or mute the audio, I can't seem to find a way to do it because I say space with.2 is where alt is, but the A doesn't have a.2 in it. So I guess I'm just wondering whether this is a case that's been considered, whether this is a known issue. whether there might be some time on the roadmap or could be made some time in the roadmap to have a look at the HID keyboard support on the orbit and on the writer and just make it a little bit more robust. Venkatesh Chari Well, thank you very much, Matthew. This is great input. Quite honestly, I don't think we have found this use case. At least I have not heard about it. The there is, as you can imagine, there is a little bit of a challenge with finding appropriate key mappings for things like alt, and so I what key combination would you suggest for alt, because I mean in and I don't want to speak for our development team, but simple changes to key mappings are relatively straightforward for us to do. So I'd love to get a fix to you and to the rest of the user community. What would you recommend for a key combination? Speaker 9 Well, so I think there's two problems. I think the first problem is the key combination, which is just a bit arbitrary. And I'll come back to that. I think that the more pressing problem is that the key combination doesn't lock. So if I want to press whatever key combination you assigned it to, you would still have this problem with some letters that don't involve that key. So you need it to work in a way where you press the key combination 1st and it locks the Alt key down and then you press the next letter rather than pressing everything all at the same time. And I think that's probably more, that's probably the more pressing issue actually, rather than the key assignments. In terms of the key assignments, though, if you were going to rework it, I would probably look at where the modifier keys live on the keyboard. So if you look on a Windows keyboard, the key furthest on the left is the control key, and then the middle key is the Windows key, and then the key to the right of that is the Alt key. And so I would mimic that. If I was designing it, I would have space with.3 would be control, space with.2 would be windows, and space with.1 would be alt because it would mirror the shape of the left-hand side of the keyboard. And then there's a few other keys I haven't thought about for, you know, insert, and I think shift I would probably do on.7 because it's kind of like a capital in computer braille. And then there'd be a few other keys on the right-hand side that you'd have to kind of think a bit harder about. But that's the principle that I would use if you were going to redo the key maps. But as I say, I think it's the fact that it doesn't lock that is the more pressing issue. Venkatesh Chari Right, No, agreed. Let me take this back to the team. I think that's a great suggestion. Quite honestly, it hasn't come up in the past, which is surprising to some degree. I suspect that is because most folks tend to use it with a smartphone, where and they typically use the screen reader mode, the screen reader profile. So this is very helpful, Matthew. Thank you for this. And I'll probably be in touch with you to work out some of the details as soon as we're in a position to implement it. Speaker 9 Yeah, I do. Just to give you the context as to why I'm not using screen reader mode, because I did think about that and screen reader mode probably would do what I want. The reason is that. On Windows, certainly, a screen reader can't drive more than one Braille device at a time. So on the computer, I have, I'm using JAWS as it goes, but I've got a Braille display running on the computer. And if I wanted to use the Orbit Writer as a remote control with the screen reader protocol, I'd have to disconnect that Braille display and connect the Orbit Writer in its place. And I don't want to do that, which is why I'm interested in the HID keyboard, specifically in this use case. Venkatesh Chari Understood, understood. No, that's a very good. use case. I totally understand why you're doing it that way. Thanks very much, Matthew. Great input. I'll see what we can do with the team. Speaker 9 Yeah. All right. Thanks very much. Robert Carter Yeah, thank you, Matthew. That's very interesting. Brandon, please unmute and go ahead, sir. Speaker 8 Well, I just thought of something else when it comes to TTS. I know this wasn't this was discussed a while back. But I know you guys have an agreement with phonics or speech effects to include deck talk in the calculator. Have you thought of utilizing that to see if you could put that over? And some of us, if we wanted to, could pay for that as a possible inclusion in future. Venkatesh Chari That's a very good question. Yes, we do have Deck Talk on our calculator. That license is for the calculator alone. And it's a very different implementation. It has basically been kind of redone by us to fit into a very, very constrained and compact environment on the calculator. It has certainly been brought up in the past, whether we can provide deck talk. It's something that we can certainly look into. So it's good to know that there's an interest and we'll check and see what options are available to make it available on the device. Again, there are licensing and commercial aspects to many of these. Not exactly sure what options are available for DeckTalk right now, but we'll look into it. Robert Carter All right, well thank you, Brandon, and thank you, everybody. This has been a really good meeting today. I appreciate everybody's questions and ideas. It's awesome that this community comes together like this and does this meeting. Any final comments from you, Venkatesh, before we bring it to a close? Venkatesh Chari I just want to thank you and thank everyone for the interaction for this meeting. I am hopeful that I'll meet many of you at the conventions. Just to finish, Robert, I just want to remind folks to tell your friends about the subsidy program through the voice of specially abled people. It's an ongoing thing. We want people to take advantage of it. It's a great opportunity to get a Braille display for less than $500. And the Orbit player, full-fledged, full-function Daisy player for less than $200. So please spread the word. Robert Carter Yeah, for sure. It's a great program. All right. Well, we will be back sometime in July, it's going to be interesting to try to work it out. I know you've got conventions coming up and I'm going to be in Scotland for the last half of July, but we'll figure something out. Venkatesh Chari Definitely. Robert Carter All right, take care everyone.