You need a Raspberry Pi, 6 motors, 8 buttons, breadboards (depending on the setup and their sizes), a LED matrix, and an appropriate number of transistors and wires. As far as the wiring goes, we used the WiringPi library (together with this diagram). Wire it up as you see fit and according to your setup.
For the physical design of the device, we encourage everyone to be as creative as possible. Our own contraption is eco-friendly, built with a recycled box, an egg carton for the motors, strepsils caps to cover the motors, blue tack, hot glue, tape etc. because it was just a prototype.
Generally, the Raspberry Pi comes with WiringPi. If not, make sure to get it. You can check that by typing in a terminal
$ gpio - v
If something shows up it means it is installed.
In order to run it, you need to run translate from the terminal.
The user will be prompted to a menu, where they can choose whice mode of translation they want to use.
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Text to Braille:
- They can choose the time each character will be displayed for (eg. 1.5s)
- They can choose to read from a text file or directly from the terminal
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Braille to Text:
- Use the BrailleBoard to type what character the user wants, no matter which order the buttons are pressed
- After each character the user has to press ENTER
- In order to type numbers the DIGIT character has to be typed in first (see below)
- To finish a message, type in the EXIT character
- providing the deafblind community with a cheaper alternative to the current communication devices.
- addressing a real-life need which tests out the practicality of a Raspberry Pi
- 6 motors used to provide a tactile translation into Braille
- an LED matrix to also show the output in Braille (for testing purposes and in order to be able to build up on it in the future)
- a "BrailleBoard" which allows the user to type directly in Braille, also coming with a button for SHIFT and another button for ENTER