Inspiration
As Katie described her struggles as a person who was visually impaired, finding a seat in a crowded college dining hall is difficult to say the least. Once given their food, the visually impaired struggle with finding a place to sit without feeling as though they are a burden to those that surround them.
What it does
The Seats application will update on available seats and the members who are sitting around the available seats in a dining hall and instruct the users their destination.
How we built it
We receive data from the sensor and compile them through Aduino. We wrote a python script that reads through the data from Aduino and push them up to our API that was created from scratch instantaneously. One of our group members built an app that receives data from the API and prioritizes the tableView cells showing first the tables with open seats with friends in a general location. The other group member of ours built an braile reader for menu or API input from chefs side to update food selection at dining hall for the future development of our application.
Challenges we ran into
Some of the many challenges we ran into include: 1. the Aduino was not compiling data received from the sensor correctly 2. The application was not reading information from the API properly 3. We had a hard time sorting the data in array 4. It was difficult for us to get OCR to work for braile reader 5. Getting familiar with the language of braile. 6. Understanding the struggles of a visually impaired person.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud that all the individual modules of our application work perfectly when being put together; We are proud that our braile reader are able to identify an English letter using the camera on the cell phone and display it in Braile on the phone screen
What we learned
We learned how to work a sensor and an Aduino together. We learned how to build an API from scratch. We learned how to write a Python script that reads data from Aduino and pushes them to the API. We learned how to prioritize a tableView. We learned how to use SwiftCode to write the Braile Reader.
What's next for Seats
Any person with the app can check into the table which will in turn show the users of the app the name of the person sitting at the table. Friends of the visually impaired person will be prioritized and pushed further up the table. This can be customizable to the different table types and seating arrangement of any given dining hall. As a special feature of the app, we have developed the very first braille reader on the iPhone which will allow users to take a picture of the menu, which will then convert it into text, and immediately afterwards into individual braille characters that can be read through vibrations on your smartphone. Seats can be used in practically any dining hall and is customizable for any dining hall based on shape.
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