Stumbled across this neat tool for #blind folks to use webcams as a sort of sonar using stereo audio. (warning can be loud)
Found it from this blog post on using orca headless on a raspberry pi. I want to get rid of screens eventually so it's quite relevant for me.
https://techesoterica.com/future-ready-vision-with-the-voice-and-the-raspberry-pi-4b/
@mauve Please tell me more about getting rid of screens eventually. I am in the process of moving to a pure text + audio working environment, with minimal forays to GUI apps over VNC into a sandbox only.
@brandon Will do. What are you using for the audio? I think I could get Orca to a usable state once I get used to object navigation and figure out which apps work best with it. Or I'll just make that screen reader :P Getting at the accessibility tree is pretty easy actually. My twiddler keyboard is getting to be usable for most of my workflow too
@mauve I have my own TUI-rendering hardware that supports ANSI escape sequences and audio over serial using compressed Opus files. I can't seem to use any of the existing assistive audio framework as they all assume you are in a GUI environment. All I need from a computer is a serial port. I'm thinking of writing my own multimodal framework for text/audio similar to Bubble Tea from Charm Bracelet, but combining text and audio modalities.
@brandon Hmm, yeah that would make it harder to reuse existing applications. One gross thing I found is that chromium won't even enable the accessibility tree unless it detects a process named `orca` running. 😅
https://mastodon.mauve.moe/@mauve/116003449439988770
Do you have a long form writeup of your hardware somewhere? I've been leaning towards using bluetooth audio to make it more simple to get new peripherals added/removed.
At least with this guide I won't need a real display and can fake it. https://techesoterica.com/future-ready-vision-with-the-voice-and-the-raspberry-pi-4b/
@mauve I guess I don't totally understand what you're doing here. This seems like a device for wearing out and about to describe the world to you. Are you using it to describe the contents of screens instead?
@brandon Oh! The vOICe part isn't relevant. I just care about the headless raspi use case. From there I'll either use Orca or my own screen reader setup to navigate apps via the accessibility tree. Maybe a "screen optional" setup so I can connect my display glasses if I really need to see something?
@mauve I have had a lot of trouble using display glasses with a Pi. I have found one cable in the whole of the universe that provides HDMI to USB-DP. However, if I want to get head tracking so that it can stick the display in one spatial position, then I need this add-on Android device that doesn't have great battery life, or glasses with cameras in them which is undesirable. I do want to live this life, though, especially on planes.
@brandon Ah yeah, it's annoying that the Pi lacks displayport over usb c. I've been considering gwtting a radxa rocl 5b+ instead since it's a bit more aligned with what I want. Might need to get someone to make me a case though. I'm glad my current setup with a GPD Win 4 + my viture glasses gets me most of the way there. Just not comfy to need both hands to use the Win 4
