Living with Fleur: The Braille Sense Polaris.

Introduction.

Readers to my very occasional series of blog posts will note that, some time ago, I purchased a notetaker principally for reading documents I had prepared on the PC which I wanted to read in a portable way, sometimes to undertake audio production tasks. I also needed a product to use when out on the road so as to take notes of assessments I conduct for clients. Notetakers do much more than give you the ability to take notes these days as we will soon discover.

That experience was not a good one. The device exhibited a loud fan noise, (which was not suitable when using sensitive microphones for recording), the Braille display could be heard when moving from one line to another, it was large, cumbersome and slow to respond. It was also quite difficult to navigate around to the extent that I needed to write a "special interface" to make learning it easier. In short, I want a product to work with me and not against me.

That product is essentially now an ornament. I can't sell it because my conscience would not permit me to let someone have that in its current condition. So I just have to chalk it up to experience. The only good thing to come out of it is that people are using the interface I wrote to make the job of navigation easier as part of our Leasey product.

However, this blog post gets considerably brighter. Meet Fleur!

The Polaris.

I had read (and heard a lot) about the Braille Sense Polaris from Hims and all the cool things it could do. It isn't just for the purpose of taking notes although it does that well. You can work with Email, use the internet (albeit slowly), listen to talking books and audio files, use a dictionary, a clock, calculator, and a myriad of other things. As well as all of that, you can install apps from the Play Store. Quite how accessible that experience is will naturally vary from one app to another.

I was so taken with the device, especially after watching some YouTube videos, that I decided to purchase it unseen. I know! A very risky strategy! Our UK distributor were prepared to deliver a demo of it in our home, but due to the current crisis we are all experiencing right now, I did not think that was fair. So, we bought it, and she arrived recently.

Why do I say she, and what's the relevance of this article's title?

We've named her Fleur as she is just the most beautiful notetaker you've ever seen. What I like about this product is that the manufacturers seem to have thought of most things. We'll come to some of those later, but everything is neatly packaged in the box including a quick start Braille guide, beautiful soft carry case, charger, USB cable and the unit itself is just sleek and elegant. The quality of the Braille display is fantastic. I was able to read extensive notes this morning when doing some audio work, and I've never read so fluently on any device I can think of. All the keys on the unit can easily be located and some of them have tactile markings to aid orientation. I cannot begin to describe how wonderful this product looks.

Getting to Know Her.

Well before I got the Polaris, I read the User Guide cover to cover and I made a good set of condensed notes concerning points I might need to get started. Powering up the unit takes about half a minute. However the good news is that you can put it into "Sleep Mode", whereupon she can be awakened in a second or two and you are in the position where you left off. That is what I was hoping for. The battery life is expected to be 18 hours and so far I think that is accurate.

I especially like the placement of the panning keys on the unit to move from one line to another. There are two either side of the unit and there's no difficulty at all in using them while reading rapidly.

Braille entry even at speed is extremely quiet. Another person in the room is not always aware that it is being used. I can just sit on the sofa, use it to write notes, work with Facebook or Twitter, and it's just wonderful to be able to do that. It is useful to note here that Braille display scrolling is extremely quiet. My wife and I have both used it for delivering online presentations and I've used it when audio recording. Reading text on the Braille display is an absolute joy.

I said the developers have thought of most things and this becomes apparent when you get straight into the main menu. As you navigate, (using its default settings), you hear the menu item and its corresponding letter, such as "Word Processor, W". This means that you can get to learn the initial representation letters so you do not have to keep scrolling through the menus with the arrow keys to locate what you want. There's nothing wrong with scrolling, and indeed beginner users will do this. But it's nice to have those prompts when you are learning. They can be disabled later on. They are indicated in both speech and Braille in the event you wish to disable speech.

The great thing about the menus is that someone who was not used to this kind of technology could get up and running in a very short time. My wife Lulu had the unit in her hands for the first time yesterday, and within about four minutes she had become accustomed to the layout of keys and could open up a document in File Manager and read it. That gives you a good indicator as to the learning curve involved to do something basic.

What Have I Used?

Without writing a very long blog post detailing all of the features, I'm going to highlight briefly the features I have tested.

• Transferring a product from the PC to the Polaris via SD card, editing it and reading it. This is the main purpose for me as I've said and it works beautifully. There's no question that this time I purchased the right product. The new firmware update is available now, which among other things provides better access to documents using Google Drive. After some initial setup this works extremely well and is seemless in terms of accessing files on Google Drive. You'll find it in File Manager, and the interface is just the same as navigating the onboard storage or SD Card.
• Sending and receiving email. No problems there at all. I tested using my GMail account.
• Web browsing. Slow, but achievable. When I say slow, I am referring to the overall response between when keys are pressed and gaining output. I doubt I'll be coming back to this.
• Listening to audio and DAISY books. A great experience. The audio reproduction, (for both the synthetic speech and audio content), is of a good standard through the internal stereo speakers and outstanding on headphones. The volume levels for speech and audio output can be adjusted independently.
• Play Store. Getting apps through the Play Store itself is incredibly easy. Getting apps to work took some experimentation, but I got a tip on Facebook. When in Edit Fields, (such as to log into Twitter or Facebook for the first time), press Space with Enter rather than just Enter. That worked perfectly. I've used Tweetings for Twitter and the native Facebook app with a very high level of success.

The User Guide and Problems.

Let's talk about the very in depth User Guide first. It is, in the most part, very well written and after all, this was principally my learning tool to get familiar with the Polaris. There is no audio tutorial as far as I know.

Initially, I considered that the formatting of the User Guide document was a bit of a dog's breakfast. I had the PDF version, and when rendered in Adobe Reader, there is no ability to navigate by heading. If I open it in Microsoft Edge Chromium, the experience is markedly improved, but again there are a lot of formatting issues which make listening to the instructions quite difficult. You need to navigate by heading so you can find passages you want to refer back to. Fortunately, a version in Microsoft Word is available, which can be distributed to you with the new firmware release notes and that is extremely navigable by heading.

There is one other issue, and this relates to a problem with which I've yet to be successful.

Using the device's Terminal Mode to pair it to my iPhone so as to work with it for text entry. I would really quite like to be able to do this. The instructions in the User Guide bare no corelation whatever to what I am experiencing. Fortunately, I have received some generous help on Facebook and Twitter, and I have partially got it working. But it isn't as intuitive as I would like to the extent that I won't be using it for that purpose yet unless this can be solved.
As of 9 April 2020, my problems are the same. I upgraded the Polaris firmware, deleted the Bluetooth profile on the device and my phone, reset my phone's network settings, all to no avail. I contacted Support here in the UK and they've no idea. The updated User Guide also is not changed in this regard.

What apparently I should be able to do, (although not described in the User Guide), is:

1. Enter Terminal Mode.
2. Unlock My Phone.
3. It should pair with the Polaris.

That doesn't happen. The phone just says, "Connecting". If I adopt the below strategy however, it does work:

1. Unlock the phone.
2. Go to Settings, Accessibility, VoiceOver, Braille, so as to get ready to pair.
3. Enter Terminal Mode on the Polaris.
4. Manually connect on the phone by tapping the button relative to the display.

So it's achieveable currently but not particularly quick.

The other problem I originally had relates to using Google Assistant. I was quite looking forward to this one as well. However, when I pressed the keystrokes described in the manual, I did not seem to be able to get into the Google Voice Assistant.

It transpires that you need to download the Google Assistant app. This was not apparent when watching the YouTube video, but again, Twitter came to the rescue here. I now have that working just fine. For example, I am able to listen to the BBC news, very important at the moment.

Observations and Summary.

There is no ability to suppress capital indicators. Those of us of a certain age sometimes prefer not to be interrupted by the dot six indicator for capital letters which improves the reading speed. It is possible to have this function enabled with the JAWS screen-reader as an example, and I was expecting to find it. I did raise this during a webinar relating to the iminent update for the Polaris, and the developers said they would consider it, not for this update of course but for a future one. So that is hopeful.

Interestingly, there is no key combination to delete a word. You can delete a character, but if you want to delete a word you need to use its selection facility to select the word, then delete it. That to me does not seem intuitive.

One important aspect of the new update is the Macro Creator. This allows you to store a set of routine steps you would usually carry out with minimal key presses. For example, if you regularly want to change some Braille or speech settings, this might be a good use of macros: one to change to an alternative configuration and another to change back.

One useful tip: get to learn the shortcut keys first prior to recording the macro. The macro is going to record all your key presses from the time you begin until you stop recording. If you start recording a macro, you go into Settings and start cycling through all of them until you reach your desired location, the macro is going to faithfully represent all of those keystrokes. Not only is this a very inefficient way of working but it also means the Polaris will be quite verbose when replicating the steps. So it pays to put a lot of thought into the most efficient way of navigating to where you want to be.

There is going to be a webinar around 22 April discussing some of the Android-based apps which work well on the Polaris and that would be worth attending. I'm quite proficient at working with such apps now but it may be that I will at least note down some which function optimally.

In summary, the Polaris is not only excellent for the things I really need it to do, but is a highly customisable unit to suit all manner of personal requirements. I'm certain I will find even more things it does well and those not so good. But this unit is staying with us. It's a keeper.

People may be interested to know that there are two versions of the Polaris. The model I have has 32 cells of Braille, and the Polaris Mini, 20 cells. I'm sure people will very much appreciate the 20 cell model for extreme portability.

32 model size:
9.64 x 5.66 x 0.74 in
(245 x 144 x 19 mm)
Weight: Approx. 1.65 lb (750 g)

Finally, I'll write a little about gaining support.

At the moment, Twitter seems to be the way I have gained the most prompt assistance from people who have these devices. There is a Facebook group for Braille Sense users, but all posts are moderated. So it takes several hours for a post to be approved. Once it is approved, then the responses from the very generous people there arrive very quickly.

I hope to write more soon on this wonderful product!