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12-Year-Old Builds Lego Braille Printer
An anonymous reader writes "Shubham Banerjee, a seventh grader in California, has developed a braille printer made from a $350 Lego Mindstorms EV3 kit and some simple hardware. He calls the science fair project the Braigo. 'The Braigo's controller is set up to scroll through the alphabet. You choose a letter and it prints it out with tactile bumps on a roll of calculator paper. The print head is actually a thumbtack, which Banerjee settled on after also testing a small drill bit and a mechanical pencil. The first prototype isn't terribly fast, but it proves the concept works. Banerjee is working on improvements that will allow it to print full pages of text.'"
So it looks like his device is a braille paper printer (Which is pretty darn cool), but I wonder if something like a smaller version of Legos could be used to make "eraseable" braille type.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
And repraps are stupid because you can just buy a commercial 3d printer.
You are missing the point.
Yes it produces Braille... but 0.25 cps on 2 inch wide paper with the wrong dot spacing is not particularly useful. A printer that costs one tenth with one twentieth the performance is no breakthrough. ... it's a problem of volume. Unless dual use technology (assistive and mainstream) for either embossers or refreshable displays are used the cost will always be very high.
The problem has never been about technology, braille embossers have been around for decades
...software matters, and this kid has NONE
Read the fucking article dipshit:
"He took a basic, preexisting pattern for a printer and reworked it with new software and hardware enhancements to print out letters in braille"
Anyways, my point is this: frankly, the twelve year old kid is far better than you, you pathetic little pimpstick.
I hope you aren't a parent.
http://replikarom.com/category/rom-2/galaxy-s3
I have a Thermaltake 5.25" drive bay cup-holder/cigarette lighter. How is it that there is more of a market demand for THAT than a braille printer? Or all of the other useless tech junk out there? I remember sitting next to a blind pastor on a flight. He was trying to use his laptop, but was having some difficulty because of a program error. We just haven't built these awesome "freedom machines" to be really utilized by anyone with handicaps. All the gaming keyboards, mice, and other gee-wiz devices have more of a market to flood with "mee-to" crap, yet not one real piece of assistance tech in all of MicroCenter or NewEgg? Really?
The real point, and what makes it interesting, is that is was a 12 year-old who built the thing from Lego's and spare junk. He saw a need, and went to fill it. Good on him, that is the point of these science fair projects, make kids think about the world around them and how to solve problems, even simple ones. Hopefully it sets an example as to how we should be thinking about the world; as a place filled with people who have needs and desires. With these types of kits making it into the homes of regular people, I look forward to the engineering boom that could come out of it. I say an arduino, pi, makerbot, and lego mindstorm for every kid. Let their imagination run wild.
Give a kid an expensive pile of toys, and way more adult help than is admitted in the article, and then pretend to amaze everyone on Slashdot. This kid isn't special in the least, he's just been set up by a tiger dad or mom. Big fucking deal.
Maybe. Let's say his parents are engineering professors at CalTech or something and he got plenty ofencouragement, help and guidance from them - he's a 12 year old boy.
So what?
Here's a kid building a product that will be FOSSed - some hotshot engineer/builder can run with it - and create an affordable printer for some blind person somwhere.
It's to see someone bulding and designing something useful instead of the no-value advertizing crap being spewed out of Silicon Valley over the last decade or so. It's refreshing to see a creative and smart kid doing something of value for the World and people in need.
This kid has done more for the World than people like Mark Zuckerberg, Tom Perkins, and everyone else making billions off of nothing but sofware and hardware (ex.Google Glass) for advertising.
I hope he comes up with something along this vein and makes a shit load of money, creates a valuable product, and helps people - that's the kind of entrepreneur that makes people think, "Yep, he deserved that money."
...he's just been set up by a tiger dad or mom. Big fucking deal.
Nope. Tiger moms/dads are the least likely to give their kids an expensive pile of toys, or coddle them in any way at all. Tiger parents are typically hyper-strict disciplinarians who might threaten to burn their children's stuffed animals if their homework isn't perfect, or if they make anything other than A grades.
As for the rest of your post, well...you sound pretty bitter about something related to childhood. Would you like to talk about it?
So what?
So GP up there spent his childhood playing vidya games and whacking it to furry porn instead of actually doing something.
Since he was a waste, every child is a waste, you see. He couldn't; clearly, no one else can.
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So GP up there spent his childhood playing vidya games and whacking it to furry porn instead of actually doing something.
Since he was a waste, every child is a waste, you see. He couldn't; clearly, no one else can.
So that's why the post was modded "Informative" - it informs us about the author of the post, not the topic at hand. Now I get it!
I think the point is that they don't give the parents any credit when the kid probably did 25% of the actual work and maybe little of the logic.
Reminds me of that Simpsons episode where Bart won the science fair because it was so crappy he clearly was the only child to do it without a parent's help. Ironically, homer did.
That said, a 12 year old is capable of doing this, I was programming when I was 12. Is this news worthy? Not really. Kid's make science projects like this all of the time
Even if he were old and grumpy like me, this would be amazing work. The principle is insanely simple and I look forward to better designs to come. Braille printers shouldn't be so expensive. I've been working on a full Braille screen by designing pixels that will measure 0.8x0.8mm and using memory alloys and springs for motion. I am hoping to get the per pixel cost to below $0.01 each but memory alloys that work are ex
Cue passive aggressive racist comments. It wouldn't be /. without them.
I think the point is that they don't give the parents any credit when the kid probably did 25% of the actual work...I was programming when I was 12. Is this news worthy? Not really.
Whatever. Your parents probably did 75% of your programming work for you when you were 12.
See what I did there? I just completely dismissed your youthful accomplishment without a shred of evidence. What do you suppose that says about me as a person?
My dad was in military intelligence (the human kind, not the techno kind) and mom a housewife who didn't have a day of schooling. Yet, I caught the programming bug pretty early on (there were triggers which generated that interest of course, but most of it did not come from within my nuclear family). To date I'm the only one who's developed a fully functional Turing-complete programming language in my country. My parents could not help me with that, nor some of the very first programs I wrote as a little boy.
Sometimes we fail to realize that children do pick up interests with very little motivation, which isn't always provided by the parents. No matter how much we may want our child to become a chess grandmaster, he/she might decide to become a professional ballet dancer. What is important is to make sure that their interests are nurtured and celebrated. We as grown-ups should not feel threatened by it, but rather give support so that the child grows in confidence.
As for this particularly 'invention', I have to say that the article is a little too emphatic as well as inaccurate. Had master Banerjee developed his own hardware interface and the codec to control it, then it would be very impressive from a 'new software and hardware' perspective. However, he has only written software that (most probably) interfaces with the Mindstorms software drivers. I bet you anything that there are plenty of children out there who've developed lots of clever software for Mindstorms, and created clever mechanical devices from the EV3 kit. Why should they not be celebrated as much as master Banerjee?
It also informs us of the intelligence of the moderator.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Granted, the film plods along a bit but it's worth it.
Tiger moms/dads are *most* likely to bribe your professor or require contractors to hire you b/c it would be bad "face" if their kid was a failure at life.
Take that 'tiger' superiority and cram it up your...
whatever...
GP's post is acrimonious but it is **totally fucking true**
This kid didn't do this...the kid's parent gave him step by step directions. I had an awesome dad who was a cryptographer in the Navy in the 70s and he taught me **all kinds** of awesome shit. That's awesome and I'm thankful. He sure as shit didn't help me write an Orthogonal Time-Division Multiplexing algorythm for my science fair projects though...because that would have been **cheating**...he helped me make a few things but obviously this kid had all kinds of help and most importantly, the article seems to purposely not mention how the kid made all this happen just his step by step.
It's about accuracy in reporting **WHAT IT TAKES TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN THE TECH WORLD**
if we present this mindless crap as examples of young people doing science...well, we're cheating **them** and **ourselves**
there are **real** kids out there doing stuff at this level with only basic guidance & procurement help
Thank you Dave Raggett
Nah, my dad barely knew programming. The thing is, my programming was pretty bad at age 12. I didn't know what arrays were and how to use them.
Also, look up the word "probably" since you don't seem to know the definition.
Oops, replied to wrong post. This was intended for your parent.
> Kid's make science projects like this all of the time
Their *what* make science projects?
The point isn't that someone made a braille printer from lego, or that it its a good device(its not). The point is that a 12 year old did it, and frankly - that's fantastic. Thumbs up to the kid for thinking in the right direction. Keep it up and you might end up as an engineer one day.
It was ages ago back when there were just laser copiers, no printers (yes that long ago).
It was to print on a sheet of thermoexpandable or thermodeformable plastic and expose that to a infrared heat source which would raise the print. Nowadays, an inkjet printer would be better, no fuser drum to complicate things. Or you could have inkjet cartridges filled with a chemical which would react with a specially surfaced paper to create bumps.
As a Rube-Goldberg device, I'd like to see a Lego printer that assembled "Braille movable type" using "Letters" made of 2x3 legos with selected dots shaved off.
Call it the Legotenburg Press.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's a great thing he did, and I hope he can make it something usable for the blind also. There exists screen reader type of braille machines like ones from Seika, which I've installed for one natively blind person. These can go for thousands of dollars because the mass market doesn't exist. The person I know also utilizes OCR scanners and speech synthesis. The books and newspapers are provided in audio by an organization for the blind.
I'd guess there isn't much need for paper as the medium, but everything helps. Cheap method to produce printed braille would be of great help for event organizers who need to cater blind participants.
thing is, my programming was pretty bad at age 12. I didn't know what arrays were and how to use them.
Also, look up the word "probably" since you don't seem to know the definition.
That's PROBABLY why you weren't newsworthy. In fact, you PROBABLY still don't amount to much.