Easy Braille

Inspiration

We wanted to come up with something that made an impact on people's lives. Most menus, signs, and books don't have braille translations. Our product would give blind people the freedom to access information even if measures for people with disabilities aren't already in place.

What it does

The Easy Braille is a text to braille device that has an app that scans a piece of texts and converts it to braille.

How we built it

We used CAD to create the rough design of the device. We used circuit lab to design the basic schematics, and we coded the software element in Arduino.

Challenges we ran into

The primary challenge we ran into was figuring out how to get the pins to push up to create the braille characters. After cycling through many ideas, we came up with the idea of using electromagnets to push the pins up.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The issue of how the pins will rise was a massive roadblock, but we're proud of how we worked through the problem.

What we learned

We learned many interesting things about braille. None of us had ever thought about how braille worked as a language, but we learned a lot about braille spacing and what braille characters look like.

What's next for Easy Braille

Due to our limitations, we were unable to create a prototype for the Easy Braille. The next step for would be to 3D print the pins, create the box using laser-cutters, and arrange the matrix of pins.