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12-Year-Old Builds Lego Braille Printer

Posted by samzenpus on from the new-type dept.

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.'"

6 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. Braille Legos by sokoban · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Braille Legos by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Informative

      There are other printers that can produce "erasable" braille. Some of the most interesting do it with tiny electrical impulses that produce a tactile sensation that is an illusion of dots. This was described in an article in last week's Economist. The article pointed out that far fewer people are learning braille today for two reasons: other technologies replace it for many purposes, and, because of better treatment and prevention, there are far fewer blind people today.

  2. Re:Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...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.

  3. Re:Not particularly useful.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You are a classic example of the two kinds of people. There are those that do things, and then there are those that ...........

  4. Missing The Point by ltrand · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  5. Re:Not particularly useful.. by SpankiMonki · · Score: 2

    A cheap lousy prototype does not improve upon what we've already got.

    So...you don't know what "prototype" means. Thanks for clearing that up.