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Do any #blind people reading this either own the (expensive) Monarch tactile graphics device or have access to one through school or work? If so, is it at all open to third-party apps running on the device itself? Failing that, has anyone figured out the specs of the computer that's certainly inside it? It's expensive enough that it would be great if it could serve as a blind person's general-purpose computer.
#blind

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Jason J.G. White

I think there’s an SDK for it, but it isn’t publicly available. I don’t know whether this is expected to change, or what terms and conditions it is subject to. The Monarch runs Android 13 at the moment, on top of which is an entire collection of specialized applications (e.g., text and braille editors, Web browser, email client, tactile graphics viewer, etc.). The browser appears to be Chromium-based. The braille terminal capability supporting the communication protocol with screen readers was recently announced, and may perhaps be included in the next software update. The Monarch I have access to for purposes of a project doesn’t seem to have this capability installed yet. I’m not a Monarch expert, so please bear that in mind - still very much learning my way around it.
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Devin Prater :blind:

Device, Humanware Monarch
Resolution: 1080X1920
Platform: RK30Board
Android: 13
Kernel: 5.10.157-ab1020122#46 SMP Preempt Wed Mar 5 07-42-19 UTC 2025
RAM 4G

Ah, the good stuff!

CPU: RK3566
Vendor: Rockchip
Cores: 4
Family: Cortex-a55
Mode: 64-bit
Machine: Aarch64
ABI: ARM64-v8A
Instructions: fp asimd evtstrm aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32 atomics fphp asimdhp cpuid asimdrdm belrcpc dcpop asimddp
Revision: r2p0
clock speed: 408 - 1992 MHz
Governor: Schedutil
Supported ABI: Arm-v8a ARM-V7a ARMBI
GPU: Mali-G52
Vendor: ARM
OpenGL ES 3.2
Vulkan 1.1
Extensions: 1.2, icon

Board: RK30SDK
Platform: RK356X
Security: 2023-08-05
Build type: user

Ugh, is that enough? My arms are tired from all that transcribing.

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Devin Prater :blind:

Oh I'm sorry if I wasn't clear, it does show multi-line Braille, it just follows the Android accessibility structure exactly. Like, 10 32-cell displays stacked on top of each other. I'm not sure how Termux would work. I know input from a Braille display on regular Android doesn't go through to Termux, so I might have to connect a keyboard to the Monarch to type commands.
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Matt Campbell

Since the original post on this thread is still being boosted, I'll summarize and opine a bit on the answers that @pixelate posted in the thread.

The Monarch is running Android 13, and it does allow third-party applications to be installed, apparently by installing APK files.

The hardware is a Rockchip RK3566 system-on-chip with a quad-core ARM Cortex-A55 CPU and 4 GB of RAM. That's roughly comparable to a Raspberry Pi 3, and coincidentally the same SoC and amount of RAM as my Quartz64 SBC.

@Devin Prater :blind:

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Jage

@pixelate What I'm aiming to learn more about is what the Dot Pad can or can't do vs. the Monarch. I know the Monarch has more homegrown software but if the Dot has a suitable API, then it may be more appealing for the price. I know there is this. github.com/dotincorp/

Dot Incorporation

Dot Incorporation has 3 repositories available. Follow their code on GitHub.
GitHub
@Devin Prater :blind:
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