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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.
I have a blind friend. He can't see anything- he was born blind and his eyes look kinda funny for it.
He uses a commercial printer that set him back several thousand dollars, plus a unit that lets him "feel" text (without actually printing it- it's basically a long line of pins that extend or retract to create the equivalent of a Braille character display).
Anyways, there isn't much going on in the way of hardware here. The printer runs over serial (DB9) and the displays a USB unit, but it emulates a RS-232 serial port on the host OS. I was able to get a bunch of ancient text based adventure games working specifically for thae devices not too long ago (took about a day to Hal up the code and get it compiled and talking to the hardware).
My point is this- software matters, and this kid has NONE. Building a Braille printer is not a hard thing to do. Writing software for a Braille printer and display that actually makes those devices useful to the point that a blind person can navigate a modern day computer is.
Frankly, I built dot printers using the original Lego Mindstorms kit (the one with the H8 powered yellow brick). It wouldn't have been a strech to do Braille printing instead. So I fail to see why this is even news, as if its somehow revolutionary or even worth being mentioned. Hell, Lego even published a pneumatic kit for the Mindstorms that let you build a plotter.
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
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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.
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.
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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.
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
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.