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Signal routing button presses for Freedom Scientific displays #20077

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Feature
#20250
Closed
Signal routing button presses for Freedom Scientific displays#20077
Feature
#20250
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component/braille-display-driversfeatureneeds-technical-investigationA technical investigation is required to progress the issue.p5https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/blob/master/projectDocs/issues/triage.md#prioritytriagedHas been triaged, issue is waiting for implementation.
@DataTriny

Description

@DataTriny
DataTriny
opened on May 7, 2026

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Braille routing events for Freedom Scientific displays are currently emitted on button release, for each button.

Describe the solution you'd like

Displays send packets when these buttons are pressed, communicating that to NVDA would be desirable for upcoming improvements to text selection.

Here are debug traces showing that this works (on a Focus 5th generation with 40 cells):

DEBUG - brailleDisplayDrivers.freedomScientific.BrailleDisplayDriver._onReceive (11:19:47.173) - hwIo.ioThread.IoThread (10232):
Got packet of type b'\x04' with args: b'\x01' b'\x01' b'\x00'
DEBUG - brailleDisplayDrivers.freedomScientific.BrailleDisplayDriver._onReceive (11:19:48.128) - hwIo.ioThread.IoThread (10232):
Got packet of type b'\x04' with args: b'\x03' b'\x01' b'\x00'
DEBUG - brailleDisplayDrivers.freedomScientific.BrailleDisplayDriver._onReceive (11:19:49.050) - hwIo.ioThread.IoThread (10232):
Got packet of type b'\x04' with args: b'\x01' b'\x00' b'\x00'
IO - inputCore.InputManager.executeGesture (11:19:49.050) - hwIo.ioThread.IoThread (10232):
Input: br(freedomScientific.Focus40):routing
DEBUG - brailleDisplayDrivers.freedomScientific.BrailleDisplayDriver._onReceive (11:19:49.899) - hwIo.ioThread.IoThread (10232):
Got packet of type b'\x04' with args: b'\x03' b'\x00' b'\x00'
IO - inputCore.InputManager.executeGesture (11:19:49.899) - hwIo.ioThread.IoThread (10232):
Input: br(freedomScientific.Focus40):routing

Packet type 0x4 is for routing button events, first argument is the 0-based cell index, second is the type of event (1 for press, 0 for release).

The driver could either emit new routing events on button presses or keep tracck of all currently pressed buttons and emit a single routing event with a list of all simultaneously pressed buttons when the last one is released.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Keep the driver as is.

Additional context

These events are currently explicitly ignored (

nvda/source/brailleDisplayDrivers/freedomScientific.py

Line 487 in 364c109

# Ignore keypresses
) but I couldn't find a technical reason behind that in #8853 or subsequent changes. Maybe @bramd has more context?

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    component/braille-display-driversfeatureneeds-technical-investigationA technical investigation is required to progress the issue.p5https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/blob/master/projectDocs/issues/triage.md#prioritytriagedHas been triaged, issue is waiting for implementation.

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