BrailleReader
It all started with an idea
One day during school, I started to daydream in class. I was staring at a graph paper for a while and suddenly it hit me! What if I could make a screen where each pixel, like the tiny squares of a graph paper, could physically raise up. This implementation of a screen would allow visually impaired users to have a much more involved experience.
A typical blind user today relies on text-to-speech technology to read e-books and text on their devices. The braille-reader could completely revolutionize the way a blind user interacts with technology. Books, images and videos can now be felt instead of seen.
Screenshot from my Evernote (2014)
Circuitry for the prototype
One braille letter
Prototype
Initially when I had the idea to make such a reader, I was only in high school and lacked the finance and technology to make a prototype. In college, for a class project (CS426-Internet of Things), I finally built a prototype. I used solenoids as individual pixels and created a user API which can send text data from an android application to a microcontroller. The microcontroller in turn controls the “pixels”.
Click on the video to the left to watch my final presentation and demo for an in depth explanation and demonstration.