With 90% of the visually impaired worldwide living in the developing countries, a braille printer that costs one sixth of a traditional one, is definitely an invention that will surely going to positively impact a lot of lives.
Subham Banerjee, a seventh grader who lives in Santa Clara, California, has come up with an innovative braille printer made with Lego Mindstorms EV3 kit that costs $349 and $5 bought add-ons bought separately from dept stores.
It uses a base reference model named Banner Print3r coded with a brand new software which can print alphabets A-Z for now.
Check out this video where he shows the working of his invention.
The kid’s next plan is to make the device capable of printing numbers 0-9. Currently Subham plans to make the tech behind it open-source so that anyone having the equipments can build one of their own.
The economic printer is dubbed as Braigo v1.0 (Braille with Lego). The retail cost of a similar braille printer costs around $2K which makes the economic printer which costs around $355 affordable for many visually impaired who were still not being get one for them.
The Lego Group has commended this great effort tweeting, “We’re very proud. Impressive work for a great cause!”.
@SocioTechnocrat We’re very proud. Impressive work for a great cause!
— The LEGO Group (@LEGO_Group) January 25, 2014
Subham was born in Belgium to Indian parents who later moved to California. He did his elementary schooling at Don Callejon School. He is currently studying for Champion School in San Jose.
Official Braigo Google+ Page / Official Braigo Facebook Page
