Hello,I am happy to report that I have just had an opportunity to try being helpfull today. I had a NVDA remote session with a beautifull girl who was trying to get her Tieman Voyager braille display to work with NVDA and brltty on windows. After some trial and errors we managed to get it to work finally.
Braille Voyager is connected to the computer through an USB cable directly with no converters or other auxiliary devices involved.
We have connected it to a computer running windows 10.After connecting the USB cable the display has appeared as a "Braille Voyager" under Other devices with no driver available status within windows device manager. After this initial connection we have unplugged the USB cable and plugged it back several times as part of our troubleshooting steps, however now I assume that was unnecessary. We have started by downloading libusb-1.0 compatible version of brltty, version 6.7 as of this writing:
https://brltty.app/archive/brltty-win-6.7-0-libusb-1.0.exeThe installer asked for elevated privileges by showing the standard windows UAC prompt which we have granted. Within brltty configuration utility we have selected usb connection and driver auto. At the end we have manually tweaked it to driver vo. However that has happened after it all worked fine. Towards the end of the installation process installer has prompted to install libusb driver. We have answered yes but it turned out this step has passed very quickly and I can't say it has really worked as intended. The installer finished with no errors displayed and the brlapi service running. Voyager has remained connected throughout all of this but it was showing nothing. We have used disabled brlapi batch script to stop and uninstall the brlapi windows service in order to trouble shoot. Then we have started elevated command prompt and navigated to the brltty install folder. When started brltty it printed some errors to the command prompt window. I haven't managed to copy them but it included something similar to interface not implemented. The device manager was showing the display with no driver available all the time. Thus I assumed we need to find a working driver. However I knew on linux no driver apart of standard USB drivers that are included with the linux kernel and libusb library is needed. After some googling I have found out there is a tool called Zadig that can identify USB devices with no driver available and install one of the supported USB libraries so the device can be used through these USB interfaces.
So I have downloaded Zadig from its website at https://zadig.akeo.ie/ I have noticed it has been updated sometime in 2024.After launching Zadig I have discovered it's not accessible particularly well as keyboard navigation is not working inside its main window. I have used NVDA's object navigation to explore the window and combination of default actions and mouse emulation to control the Zadig app.
To explain how I have used the app I need to describe its main window.The first control is a dropdown button which changes its name and associated action depending of which USB device is selected and if it has a driver installed or not. It's the only actionable button, so after choosing your settings in this window you have to start the driver installation or reinstallation by pressing this button. Then there is a combobox which displays USB devices it has found with no driver installed. Only one device is visible and the combobox does not gain the system focus. In order to select a different USB device, I had to find the expand button with the object navigation and used its default action by pressing NVDA+enter. Then the list next to the button populated with the USB devices. If no USB device is shown or if you have made a mistake and you wish to replace a driver you have to open the menu bar and enable listing of all devices from there. While all your USB devices are displayed be very carefull not to install the selected driver to a different already working device. Then use the expanded combobox to find the device you are interested in. In the order of using object navigation, there are some read only edit fields along with static texts labelling them listing which USB driver is installed for the selected device and the device identifiers. Then there is some kind of spin button showing the selected USB interface / driver. Again this can't be focused and manipulated using standard keyboard navigation. After a lot of trial and error I have found out the spin button has some buttons next to it and by emulating mouse clicks on those buttons it's possible to change the selection. In fact now I think the first thing you should do after selecting your USB device is that you should manipulate these buttons until the spin box is set to
libusbK (v3.1.0.0) At least this worked for us.Initially winusb driver was selected. We have installed that but we were getting input / output errors in the command prompt running brltty, the device beeping, so we had to reinstall the different driver in the Zadig app. After installing the driver this way, we were able to start the run brltty batch script from the elevated command prompt window again, it displayed no errors and printed world brltty on the display in braille and we knew it's finally working. To get it to run with NVDA we have closed the brltty window and started enable brlapi batch script.
It installed the service and displayed an error. It looked like this: C:\Program Files (x86)\BRLTTY>enable-brlapi.bat BRLTTY 6.7 rev BRLTTY-6.7+ [https://brltty.app/] brltty.exe: service installed: BrlAPI ERROR: Invalid syntax. Type "REG ADD /?" for usage.So the service has been installed but we had to start it manually from the services.msc control pannel applet. The startup type was set to automatic so I was not afraid it won't work after rebooting the machine. I was afraid something has gone wrong when I have seen that error related to the reg utility, however after starting the brlapi windows service, the text along the lines not in text mode appeared on the display. The final step was to open NVDA's settings, navigate to Braille category of settings and change braille display to brltty. And yeah it finally worked fine.
Perhaps it might be possible to streamline this setup into something less involved but at the other hand it's not that difficult once it's now figured out what needs to be done. I have tried to explain all the steps but if you find something missing or you need me to describe something in more details or using slightly different words, please ask and I'll try my best to help.
Huge thanks for maintaining brltty and for being so patient while waiting for this. I still have no braille device my-self so I had to wait for this opportunity to get my hands on a remote windows session with the braille display connected.
Greetings Peter
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