Main content

Reading books from NNELS on a Mantis Q40

Last updated: March 15, 2024

Many NNELS titles can be accessed on a Mantis Q40 braille display without needing to connect the display to the phone or computer while reading. This means that no matter where you are and regardless of whether you have access to a phone or computer nearby, your books will always be accessible on the device. This tutorial will walk you through the process, which involves downloading title(s), transferring them onto your device, and opening them on your display.

Downloading Titles

Before transferring books to the braille display, we need to download them. If you are unfamiliar with the process of finding and downloading books, please check out the following tutorials:

When you find titles available in multiple formats, you may be wondering which is the right one for the display.

The Mantis only reads text-based documents such as .brf, .docx, NISO (DAISY), .pdf, .txt, and .rtf. You can find the list of supported formats in the “Using the Library Application” section of the Mantis Q40 manual, and the Frequently Asked Questions document. Both of these can be downloaded from the Humanware support documentation page for the Mantis. Many of these formats listed above can be found in the repository. We suggest downloading titles in .brf, .docx, and .rtf for the smoothest reading experience. If a title you wish to read is not in our repository and/or in your preferred format, you are welcome to submit a book request. Note that some titles in .brf may be packaged as a zip file if the book has been split into multiple files so that you can download the entire book without clicking on multiple links.

Transferring Books onto Your Device

There are two methods of putting books on your display. You can transfer them from your computer directly via the USB cable by copying/moving files onto the device’s internal storage. You can also transfer books by putting files onto a USB stick or SD card, plugging it into the device, and copying/moving them over via the built-in Library or File Manager application. In the next two sections, we will go over each of these methods step-by-step. Note that if a book is in DAISY format and is zipped up, you do not need to unzip it before transferring it to the device. For best results, unzip books in other formats such as .brf or .docx before transferring them. It is possible to open a zip file from the File Manager on the device and then open a document inside it, but the book list in the Library application doesn’t reliably show the contents of zip files that do not contain a DAISY book.

Method 1: Transferring books directly from your computer

For Windows Users:

  1. Turn on the unit if it is powered off or wake it from sleep mode.
  2. On your computer, navigate to the folder where you have saved the downloaded files.
  3. Copy or cut the file(s) you wish to put on the display.
  4. Connect the USB cable from the computer to the braille display. You will hear a sound from your computer, indicating the connection is successful. If you do not hear a sound, you may have a broken cable or one that does not support data transfer. We recommend using the USB-C cable that comes with the unit, but any USB-C cable that supports charging and data transfer will work.
  5. On the computer, navigate to the “APH Mantis Q40” drive that should now be available from File Explorer and select it. You may get to it from the desktop by selecting “Computer” and then clicking “APH Mantis Q40”. Note that if the display goes to sleep, the drive disappears, so ensure that the device is awake before locating the drive. When you plug in your display, you may get a popup menu asking what you want to do with the device. You can select the “Open device to view files” option from here to open the drive. Once you have selected the drive, you will see a folder called “Media folder”. Open it, then open the “books” folder.
  6. Paste your file(s).

For macOS Users:

Transferring books from a Mac requires a few extra steps. For the drive to appear in your desktop/Finder, you will need to install the Mac OS transfer software (link starts download) from the Humanware website. Refer to the instructions included with the software for information on supported macOS versions. If your version is not supported, you may wish to transfer files using a USB drive or SD card instead.

Unzip the folder and follow the instructions in the “Using macFUSE to transfer files to MACos.docx” file to install the transfer software. Then follow these steps to transfer titles:

  1. Turn on the unit if it is powered off or wake it from sleep mode.
  2. On your computer, navigate to the folder where you have saved the downloaded files.
  3. Copy or cut the file(s) you wish to put on the display.
  4. Connect the USB cable from the computer to the braille display. We recommend using the USB-C cable that comes with the unit, but any USB-C cable that supports charging and data transfer will work.
  5. On the computer, navigate to the “OSXFUSE” drive that should now be available from the desktop/Finder and select it. You will see a folder called “Media”. Open it, then open the “books” folder. Note that if the display goes to sleep, the drive disappears, so ensure that the device is awake before locating the drive.
  6. Paste your file(s).

Method 2: Transferring books onto the device from a USB Stick

These instructions discuss using a USB stick to transfer files. The Mantis Q40 also supports SD cards, and using an SD card for this process should also work. If your computer does not have a card reader, you can attach an external one to use an SD card.

  1. On the computer, navigate to the folder where you have saved the downloaded files.
  2. Copy or cut the file(s) you wish to put on the display.
  3. Plug in a USB stick and open the drive. When you plug in a USB stick, Windows may ask you what you would like to do with this device. You can select the option to “Open folder to view files.” If the menu does not appear, navigate to “Computer” from your desktop and click on your USB drive. If you are on a Mac, you will access the USB drive from the desktop or on the sidebar in Finder.
  4. Paste your file(s) wherever you want on the USB stick where they can be easily accessed.
  5. Activate the eject feature in Mac or Windows, respectively, on the USB drive. Then, physically remove it from your computer. Ejecting devices can be done in Windows from the system tray by selecting the “Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media” button. You may need to click the “Show Hidden icons” button on Windows 10 and 11 to see it. If you are on a Mac, locate the drive in Finder and press “command + ‘e’” on the drive.
  6. Plug the USB stick into the braille display.

Transferring files using the File Manager application

  1. From your display, open the file manager. Press control + ‘d’ to display the available drives and select the USB drive.
    1. If you are working with a single file, navigate to it. Then press control + ‘c’ to copy or control + ‘x’ to cut the file. It will show “copied” or “cut”, depending on the command you choose to use.
    2. If you want to copy or cut multiple files simultaneously, navigate to each file you want to work with and press control + enter to mark it. Then press control + ‘c’ to copy or control + ‘x’ to cut the files. It will show “copied” or “cut”, depending on the command you choose to use.
  2. Navigate back to the list of drives and select “storage”. Alternatively, you can press control + ‘d’ anywhere within the File Manager to get to the list of drives, then select “storage”.
  3. Once you have selected “storage”, open the “books” folder.
  4. Press control + ‘v’ to paste the file(s) you have copied or cut from the USB drive. You will see “pasted” appear on the display.

Transferring files using the Library application

  1. From your display, open the library.
  2. Choose “book list”. The list of available books appears. Books on a USB drive have the text “usb” after the file name. You can only act on one file at a time in the Library application.
  3. Press control + fn + ‘m’ to open the Manage Book menu.
  4. Choose “copy to” or “move to”, then “storage” to put the book in the internal storage on the display. You will notice if you later explore the internal storage using the File Manager that the Library application creates a folder structure under the books folder based on the type of the book.

If you copied the book, you will see two entries in the book list for your book: one on the USB drive and one in internal storage.

Eject the Drive

Once you are finished using the drive with the display, press control + fn + ‘e’ and choose “usb” from the menu. The display will show “usb safe to remove”. Physically remove the drive.

Opening Books

From the main menu of the display, navigate to “library” and select it.

Select “book list”.

Navigate to the book you want to read and select it. You can type the first letter of the title to jump to a title more quickly, which is especially useful if you have many books on your display. You may need to do this several times if multiple titles begin with the same letter.

Once the book has loaded, you can begin reading or explore the functionality of the Library application by pressing control + ‘m’ and then going through the options in the context menu.