Comment 1 by jteh on 2009-11-01 09:43
You should already be able to use the ALVA Satellite via BRLTTY. However, I believe this display's native drivers don't emulate a serial port, so it might be tricky to get this working alongside other screen readers. We would need assistance from Optelec to implement this, as they haven't made the API publicly available from what I've been able to find.
Changes:
Changed title from "New support" to "Native driver for ALVA Satellite braille displays"

Comment 2 by Agent Golder on 2009-11-01 15:22
Thank you, I knew but just today I managed to work with it.
It operates it in Greek much better than Jaws!

Comment 3 by bramd on 2010-03-22 23:22
I just hacked together a driver for the ALVA satellite braille displays using the SDK available on the openbraille project site. Output is already working fine, not started on key input yet.

I'll post a patch when the driver is done and I cleaned the code a bit.

Comment 4 by Agent Golder on 2010-03-23 06:30
Well, sounds interesting, we are wating...

Comment 5 by mwhapples (in reply to comment 3) on 2012-01-18 01:14
Replying to bramd:

I just hacked together a driver for the ALVA satellite braille displays using the SDK available on the openbraille project site. Output is already working fine, not started on key input yet.

I'll post a patch when the driver is done and I cleaned the code a bit.

Any progress on this? I am having severe stability issues with BrlTTY on windows7 with my Alva 544t but the problem in BrlTTY seems to be hard to find. So I am wondering if to just write a native driver for the Alva for NVDA. As its been quite a long time since you posted this and no patch has come forward I take it you decided to give up on creating your driver, any reasons why? Should I be cautious of creating my own driver for the same reasons?

Comment 6 by mwhapples (in reply to comment 5) on 2012-01-23 02:55
Just to follow up on my comment, I did make a start at looking at writing a driver using the ALVA official drivers, however as the official drivers are not supported on windows7 64-bit and its because BrlTTY has issues on windows7 64-bit I therefore have no need for supporting the official drivers if they won't work where BrlTTY has issues. For my case I think I would need to look at the ALVA communication protocols and I think I do not have time for that at the moment.

Michael Whapples
Replying to mwhapples:

Replying to bramd:

I just hacked together a driver for the ALVA satellite braille displays using the SDK available on the openbraille project site. Output is already working fine, not started on key input yet.

I'll post a patch when the driver is done and I cleaned the code a bit.

Any progress on this? I am having severe stability issues with BrlTTY on windows7 with my Alva 544t but the problem in BrlTTY seems to be hard to find. So I am wondering if to just write a native driver for the Alva for NVDA. As its been quite a long time since you posted this and no patch has come forward I take it you decided to give up on creating your driver, any reasons why? Should I be cautious of creating my own driver for the same reasons?

Comment 7 by bramd (in reply to comment 6) on 2012-01-23 14:16
Replying to mwhapples:

Just to follow up on my comment, I did make a start at looking at writing a driver using the ALVA official drivers, however as the official drivers are not supported on windows7 64-bit and its because BrlTTY has issues on windows7 64-bit I therefore have no need for supporting the official drivers if they won't work where BrlTTY has issues. For my case I think I would need to look at the ALVA communication protocols and I think I do not have time for that at the moment.

Hi Michael,

Sorry for my late reply, I missed the earlier email notification. I don't have an Alva Satellite to work with at the moment, that's why I stopped coding the driver.

The USB drivers are not supported on Windows 7 64-bits, so if that's your problem a native driver would not solve it. I know that there is an adapter being sold that should allow the device to work on 64-bits Windows, I don't know what that adapter does. You could try using a USB-serial converter and communicate with the display through the serial port. This should work with BRLTTY and with my incomplete driver if you use the serial DLL.

Comment 8 by mwhapples (in reply to comment 7) on 2012-01-23 17:12
My ALVA 544 works with BrlTTY on windows7 64-bit through USB, however from time to time (easily within a hour of use, sometimes just a couple of minutes of use) it will freeze and requires a restart of BrlTTY. From what the BrlTTY developers have said it seems to be a libusb problem. As the BrlTTY issue is a libusb problem I imagine it will not affect using the ALVA through a serial connection. Ideally I want to use it through USB as otherwise it requires an additional power connection (either to USB or the mains, my ALVA is the 544t so has no battery). Also if I were to use it through a serial connection I would need to by a USB to serial adapter as I have no serial port on this computer.

I hope the BrlTTY freezes can be sorted out as that will provide all I need.
Replying to bramd:

Replying to mwhapples:

Just to follow up on my comment, I did make a start at looking at writing a driver using the ALVA official drivers, however as the official drivers are not supported on windows7 64-bit and its because BrlTTY has issues on windows7 64-bit I therefore have no need for supporting the official drivers if they won't work where BrlTTY has issues. For my case I think I would need to look at the ALVA communication protocols and I think I do not have time for that at the moment.

Hi Michael,

Sorry for my late reply, I missed the earlier email notification. I don't have an Alva Satellite to work with at the moment, that's why I stopped coding the driver.

The USB drivers are not supported on Windows 7 64-bits, so if that's your problem a native driver would not solve it. I know that there is an adapter being sold that should allow the device to work on 64-bits Windows, I don't know what that adapter does. You could try using a USB-serial converter and communicate with the display through the serial port. This should work with BRLTTY and with my incomplete driver if you use the serial DLL.

Comment 9 by PZajda on 2012-08-28 13:46
Hi,

Any new about the driver for Alva Satellite Braille displays?

Comment 11 by jupiterfr on 2012-09-19 07:33
Hi,
I'm using an alva satellite braille display with nvda through Brltty on a 64bit windows 7 machine.
It's true that Alva's Usb connector doesn't work properly and disconnect impredictively.
I have constated the same problem on the same machine booting on linux, but on linux you can stop your alva and brltty restart properly for some time :). So, this is not usable.
Hopefully, alva's serial connector works very fine with a serial-to-usb connector. We can think that it is not a windows specific problem but a Brltty driver problem.
So, a native driver will be very appreciated.
If you want I can test it for debbuging it.
Thank for your work.

Comment 12 by jteh on 2012-09-19 08:13
A native driver won't help you for USB on a 64 bit system, since Optelec haven't released 64 bit USB drivers for this display.

Comment 13 by mwhapples (in reply to comment 11) on 2012-09-19 08:19
The BrlTTY developers know about the issue with BrlTTY and USB on the ALVA Satellites, supposedly the issue is in libusb which they use for USB communication.

Using a USB to serial convertor works fine, this should be seen as the solution for the current.

Possibly a native driver could see to this though.
Replying to jupiterfr:

Hi,

I'm using an alva satellite braille display with nvda through Brltty on a 64bit windows 7 machine.

It's true that Alva's Usb connector doesn't work properly and disconnect impredictively.

I have constated the same problem on the same machine booting on linux, but on linux you can stop your alva and brltty restart properly for some time :). So, this is not usable.

Hopefully, alva's serial connector works very fine with a serial-to-usb connector. We can think that it is not a windows specific problem but a Brltty driver problem.

So, a native driver will be very appreciated.

If you want I can test it for debbuging it.

Thank for your work.

Attachment alvaSatellite.zip added by Bernd on 2013-05-09 20:56
Description:
Alva Satellite Driver without working keys

Comment 14 by Bernd on 2013-05-09 21:01
Attached driver comes from Bramd which he hacked together. The driver should work if you copy both files into nvda's userConfig folder into brailleDisplayDrivers. You can read wha'ts brailled but no keys would work. May someone is able to enhance the driver.

I changed it for Alva delphi displays and the user told me that the driver is working under windows 7 64bit with a USB2Com converter.

Attachment alvaSatellite.2.zip added by jupiterfr on 2013-05-21 18:05
Description:
New version of the native alva satelite driver for nvda

Comment 15 by jupiterfr (in reply to comment 14) on 2013-05-22 08:00
Hi,
Thank you for your driver. It make me a good starting point.
I attach a new version that adapt your driver for NVDA 2013.1. I also added a gesture management.
The alvausb32.dll that you provided doesn't work on my system. I use the latest ABT.dll provided by optelec (http://www.optelec.com/download).
As you said this driver work for all windows (x86 and x64) if the alva terminal is connected through a serail comm port (or with a usb2comm adapter). This driver should work on any 32bit windows system with the latest optelec driver if the alva terminal is connected to any port.

The gesture I had are like thoses provided by the alva BC6 NVDA driver. I added some mine also.

The gesture are as follow:
Front pannel:

• left --> braille scrollBack
• up --> braille previousLine
• down --> braille nextLine
• right --> braille scrollForward
• cuursor+home --> braille toggle tether
• cursor --> navigator Object to Focus
• home or up+left --> review top
• down+right --> review bottom
• home+left --> review start Of Line
• home+right --> review end Of Line
• home+up --> navigator Object move To Flat Review At Object Position
• home+down --> navigator Object move To Object At Flat Review Position
• up or low routing cursors --> braille route To

Left Satellite pad:
lf1 --> alt
lf2 --> escape
lup --> windows
ldown --> windows+m
lleft --> NVDA Menu
lright --> windows+d
lf1+lf2 --> alt+tab

Right Satellite pad:
rf1 --> shift+tab
rf2 --> tab
rup --> upArrow
rdown --> downArrow
rleft --> leftArrow
rright --> rightArrow
rf1+rf2 --> enter

To install:
0. Due to a mistake during the zip packaging you must rename the alvaSatellite.py to alvaABT.py. Sory!

1. Copy the ABT.dll in the %nvdadir%\brailleDisplayDrivers directory i.e. wher the other braille driver's dlls are located.
2. Copy the alvaABT.py script into your useCconfig\BrailleDisplayDriver directory i.e.: c:\users\xxxxx\appdata\roaming\nvda\brailleDisplayDrivers (for win7).
3. Restart nvda.

Hope this driver will be usefull.

Enjoy!

P.S.: If the Nvda's main developpers team want to integrate this driver in the next nvda version, it can. I can also make an addon with this driver if you want (let me know).

Replying to Bernd:

Attached driver comes from Bramd which he hacked together. The driver should work if you copy both files into nvda's userConfig folder into brailleDisplayDrivers. You can read wha'ts brailled but no keys would work. May someone is able to enhance the driver.

I changed it for Alva delphi displays and the user told me that the driver is working under windows 7 64bit with a USB2Com converter.

Comment 16 by jupiterfr on 2013-05-23 08:26
Hello,
Due to a mistake during the zip packaging, je file alvaSatellite.py must be renamed to alvaABT.py befor installig.
Sory for this error.

Comment 17 by bramd on 2014-12-21 09:55
Closing this as CantFix for now. The current driver works (tested on Win 7 64 bits with a USB-serial adapter and an Alva Satellite). However, it still is hacky because it seems passing a COM port argument to the DLL is not working as it should, e.g. only COM1 worked for me.

Given the limitations and lack of documentation and support on the DLLs and the fact that the whole USB story on 64 bits Windows doesn't work and is unstable on 32 bits Windows 7 I would really recommend using BRLTTY to drive this displays.
Changes:
Added labels: cantfix
State: closed

Hi,

can anyone provide a zip package, which was uploaded by jupiterfr at old system. it seems, that attachments to tickets were lost during migration to github.

thanks, Jožef