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by K0balt 622 days ago
This is a fascinating potential wedge for an open-source initiative. Could you please elaborate as to what makes a device highly usable and of good quality, vs cheap and unpleasant to use?

I’ve long thought that open source would make a lot of sense for assistive devices, and that it has the potential to change incentives within the cartel of assistive device manufacturing.
1 comments
ebalit 622 days ago
There was a HackadayPrize 2023 competitor that worked on this [0]. He had to rethink the way those devices are built to bring the cost down.

That would be interesting to know if his solution could match the 4k$ in term of usability or if there is some issue like refreshing rate that make the piezo based system necessary for a good user experience.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXi1tG78AW4

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K0balt 621 days ago
That looks like a great project. I share your curiousity regarding the user experience of this vs the piezo units. Looking at it, it should be in the 50-100mS range for refresh times, maybe that is too slow? It seems like it would be plenty fast? I wonder if there are other haptic factors with the piezo, like vibration?
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