BrailliantConnect 1.0.0 is out — free, open source, and finished. Plug a Brailliant in and it appears in the Finder. Unplug it and it goes away. No macFUSE, no kernel extension, nothing to start by hand.
I wrote it because I needed it. I use a BI 40X with a screen reader every day, and getting a file onto it from a Mac had stopped being possible in any way I was willing to live with.
What it does
- The display appears as ~/Brailliant in your home folder.
- One folder per storage — the display's own memory, and a USB stick plugged into the display when there is one. Both at once: the stick is no longer invisible.
- Read and write. Copy files in and out with the Finder, or with anything else that uses the file system.
- A menu bar item says whether the display is there, and tells you when a copy is still running.
Installing
Unpack, drag into Applications, open it once. That is the whole procedure. It is signed and notarized by Apple, so it opens with no Gatekeeper warning. macOS 11 or later, Intel and Apple Silicon.
One setting, on the display
File transfer (MTP) has to be on. It has been on by default since version 2.5 of the display's software, so it probably already is. Otherwise: Options, User settings, MTP.
Nothing is switched off by this. Your display publishes its braille interfaces and the file-transfer one at the same time, and stays usable as a braille terminal while files are copying.
What it does not do
- The Finder returns before a copy is finished. Three gigabytes come back instantly and keep going for about seven minutes. The menu bar says so while it lasts, and notifies you when it lands — do not unplug in between.
- Changes made on the display itself go unnoticed until the folder is read again. MTP announces nothing.
- One connection at a time, which only matters if you also use the command-line tool that ships inside the app.
Only one model has been tested
I have a BI 40X, and that is what this was built on. Nothing in the code is tied to a model, but nothing proves the others work either. If you have a BI 20X, a BI 40, or anything else in the family, running brailliant doctor and pasting the output here would settle it — that is the one thing I cannot do alone.
Download
Download BrailliantConnect 1.0.0 from GitHub
The source is there too, under the MIT licence. Everything the app says is written to be read in braille: one fact per line, and no state carried by colour or by an icon alone.
Comments
MTP App
I don't have a Brailliant display, but does this mean it would technically let any device supporting MTP connect to macOS? I have a Google Pixel, The SensePlayer, and the NLS DA2 player, all of which use MTP for file transfers.
I'm curious if it would work with the mantis as well
if you'd like I can download and try it. I'd love the mantis to work with mac for file transfer
I have Brailliant B14
Will it work with the above device?
Thanks!
Bravo on the idea. It’s quite incredible, though, that users of an extremely expensive braille display are the ones who have to vibe-code a program that should normally have been available out of the box with the purchase. This is something the manufacturer should have done a long time ago!
I don’t have a Mac, but many of my clients have run into this problem. Thank you on their behalf. Actions disponibles
Update: Tried with the Mantis
I Tried it with the mantis just now, and the app says that the display is connected, but when i click 'open in finder' it does not open the mantis, just the 'recent' folder. I think that means in theory it's kind of half way there? Although I don't know enough about tech to tell for sure sorry.
I had hoped it would work with the Mantis because the software if i understand correctly is quite similar to the Brailliant.
Wait a second.
I missed the part I wrote. I really thought it was humanware! How pathetic of them. The above comment from @Sof is so so true.
1.1.0: report a problem without the Terminal
BrailliantConnect 1.1.0 is out, and it exists because of the replies above.
The one thing I could not do from here was ask any of you what your display was actually doing. The diagnosis lived behind a command-line tool, and asking someone to open the Terminal to help me is asking too much. So the app now produces it itself.
There is a new item in the menu bar: Report a Problem…. You pick what it is about, write a line or two, give an address for the answer, and send. The report carries the model, serial number and storage areas of your display, what the USB bus says about it, and whether the Finder location was published — and it says all of that before you press Send. Nothing else leaves your machine.
It also often answers on the spot. A display that is plugged in but asleep, or one with file transfer switched off, is something the app can see for itself, so it tells you rather than letting you write a report about it.
Download BrailliantConnect 1.1.0 (1.6 MB, signed and notarized)
The release page, with the full notes, is here.
bexgray01, about the Mantis
Yours is the report I have been waiting a week for. What you described — the app says connected, "Open in Finder" lands on Recents — means the display was detected on the USB bus but the Finder location never came up. That is not an MTP failure, and it is the half I could never see from here.
If you still have the Mantis to hand: install 1.1.0, plug it in, and send a report with "The display is not detected" as the subject. That will tell me exactly where it stops. It takes a minute and no Terminal.
Maldalain, about the BI 14
I do not know, and I would rather say so than guess. Nothing in the code is tied to a model — the display is found by its USB interface declaring itself as MTP — but the BI 14 is older than anything this was built against, and "should" is not "does". Same answer as above: install it, try it, send a report. If it does not work, the report tells me why.
Chris, about other MTP devices
No, and not by accident. The app only looks at HumanWare devices: it filters on the vendor ID before anything else. A Pixel or an NLS player speaks MTP just as well, but this is not a general-purpose MTP client and I have no way to test one.
Sof, TheBlindGuy07 — thank you both. Nothing to add to what you wrote.