At some point during the quest for an affordable, simple bi-stable way to design the pin for the Braille system, I came up with this, It worked, and by transmitting the movement into the linear motion of the pin, I could have designed an entire 6 pins character.

In the end I did not use this system, as it was quite complex to be assembled, and to as cheap as my main idea.

The idea was to use to small (15mm long) 1mm thick Nitinol wires. They have been annealed into a straight shape; a nichrome wire was wrapped around each one, so when it was powered, the heating was causing the nitinol wire to become straight again, while the other one was flexing. A string connected them, and a small magnet at each end would have kept the end in place for both positions.