Electromechanical Refreshable Braille Module : HackadayPrize 2023

[@maesto]

FYI: You can get custom wound standing SMD inductors with specified cores. This way you'd not have to self wind the magnets. (Though you still could) and would probably barely increase cost while making manufacturing at scale a lot easier/vheaper.

[@lbgstzockt8493]

What are the minimum order quantities for those?

[@Eugensson]

I think Fishman owns the patent. What they do it they take several 16 layer PCBs, trace the coil, and sandwich these PCBs.

[@vjvarada]

I got a quote from a company called Audemers (audemars.com/) for about 6000 Euros for an MOQ of 1000 coils. Im assuming there is a high initial setup cost. At a 20k MOQ, they can even provide SMT mounts that can be used on pick and place. Its good to know its possible, need to figure out the economics of it when scaling up.

[@thorwaldjohanson2526]

Love this project. I can see a bunch of the core components being mass produced in higher quality and for cheap a bit down the line. Similar to the tiny magnets. The project being open source, I wouldn't be surprised if other talented engineers will contribute and improve upon the design

[@すどにむ]

Do they have to be customized to exact spec, in the first place?

[@Dylan_Lanckman]

I cannot thank you enough for this. I'm literally crying sir. I'm an IoT student and my partner is blind. If this becomes widely available this opens doors for whole new systems for braille users.

[@vjvarada]

It's so motivating to hear this, thankyou!

[@profpuffofficial2]

i live to read stuff like this

[@skilledcamman4752]

create one for urslef

[@Jefferson-ly5qe]

Fantastic work Vijay, will be following this story closely!

[@Dylan_Lanckman]

@@vjvarada no I thank you, much love from Belgium, sir!

[@FilamentStories]

This is simply wonderful! Thank you for championing this very challenging space where the price point has always been so high due to complexity and low volume. Wow, I’m just blown away!

[@vjvarada]

Thank you so much! I saw your video about it, thankyou for the shoutout! Your daughter inspires me to keep making this better!

[@MrFox_Adventures]

Thank you for sharing it on your channel this is super cool!

[@FilamentStories]

@@vjvaradaI’ve been following along, checking in every so often here. We were completely surprised our video has done so well, getting over a million views at this point. I was hopeful more people would come here to see your full video, or head over to your Hackaday page. I’m glad to see more views there than the last time I checked. My daughter is a little overwhelmed that she's been viewed over a million times on KZbin! I’m hopeful she and I can do some more videos together on how 3D printing can be used as a tool to help enable or assist those with visual impairments. I don’t know if it there is anything we can do to help with your project, but if you have any ideas, please let us know. -Courtney

[@vjvarada]

@@FilamentStories Thank you for your support as is! I've myself never had this many views or comments on KZbin, it's getting harder to keep up! The project won the Hackaday Prize, so I had quite the time travelling to the US and back. There are a few people who have joined in to contribute to the project, and even a company threatening to sue for patent infringement (baseless claims dw, they can't stop me from releasing something non commercially). The magnitude of what I'm doing is just sinking in, over the next year I plan to refine to project to a finished product that can be manufactured in a decentralised way with 3D printing. Since both assistive devices for the blind and 3D printing is an intersection you are in as well, I'd love if you could just share our progress from time to time, to get enough of a community involved in the development and perhaps have parallel developments happen all across the world, since the tools to recreate these are accessible to all. Thanks again for the shoutout and checking back in, I'd love to stay in touch!

[@shukrantpatil]

@@vjvarada hey I'm really curious about which resin you used. I guess the resin holds great importance

[@idontwantahandlethough]

THIS IS SO COOL! You are the man, Vijay 🤗

[@uniworkhorse]

I had no idea that braille devices were so freakishly expensive. Great work, makes me wonder what other accessibility technologies can be reduced in cost and manufacturing. It's amazing that you were able to hit both of those in your design!

[@bingbong9076]

It isnt because its expensive, its because they know they can rip off the disabled, this happens across almost all disabled marketed devices. Big props to Vijay for having some humanity.

[@iFireender]

Well, thing is, most blind people - as far as I know - just use screen readers instead. You do not nead a braille display if you can get everything read to you. I'd guess braille displays are most often used in public places - where you don't have your own device, so you wouldn't know how to operate it easily.

[@joachimfrank4134]

​@@iFireenderone of my co-workers uses a braille line to read. I've seen her using it and think she reads faster than the speed a screen reader would talk. And she has her reader on some insane speed, so I could only hear gibberish when she uses it.

[@iFireender]

@@joachimfrank4134 Huh, interesting. But yeah, I can see that being a thing. But my point still remains - where Braille readers once would have been indispensible, nowadays, it's just possible to set up most devices with proper accessibility modes for blind people, which decreases the market for braille readers even more, which in turn makes them more expensive.

[@unliving_ball_of_gas]

​@@joachimfrank4134The insane speed? Yep they're confirmed blind. Since blind people don't see (duh), a large part of their brain that is normally used for processing vision is instead repurposed for processing audio. So they can understand speech way faster than us.

[@Deebofreebo]

Wow. You are a hero. This will change lives.

[@lucianolizana446]

Man... this is amazing!... even if this does not get all the media attention for the hackaday prize, you should be sure about the importance of what you are doing... congrats from Santiago, Chile !

[@vjvarada]

Thankyou!

[@sail4life]

The rotating magnetic cam bi-stable design is sheer genius! What a great technology advancement. Awesome, simply awesome.

[@vjvarada]

I wish i could take credit for being the first to come up with the idea of using cams, but here (worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/014715047/publication/JP2802257B2?q=pn%3DJP2802257B2) is a patent from 1996 that proposes an idea for using cams as well. Although very different in terms of design from the one I've created, its good news that a design that uses cams had been patented once and is now expired, meaning that its in the public domain!

[@rahuls7039]

​@@vjvarada The link is throwing of as *Invalid Query* ...

[@jurgyy]

@@rahuls7039 Remove the last parenthesis from the url (or %29 if you have already opened the link)

[@vjvarada]

@@rahuls7039 search for JP2802257B2 on the platform

[@shukrantpatil]

@@vjvarada so now that it is in the public domain , is everyone else free to use this mechanism ?

[@dillpickle7633]

Thank you for doing this! Being disabled should not be a burden of any type and you are one of the amazing people who are making the world more accessible for those who are disabled.

[@vjvarada]

Thank you so much!

[@shukrantpatil]

Hey can i know the voltage and current required to drive the coils ? @@vjvarada

[@gingeral253]

Amazing innovation.

[@almosthuman4457]

Very cool

[@RedLamentations]

This is truly a pinnacle of innovation, taking something and making it better and cheaper. You have the heart and mind of a generation

[@jaimevaldez3058]

Congratulations on achieving such a wonderfully noble endeavor making education accessible to the visually impaired! Kudos!

[@ChromiumProtogen42]

You have legitimately changed the world for the better. I applaud that.

[@ShouryaSatvik]

Awesome Work!!!!!

[@OstlerDev]

This is absolutely amazing! Great work, great engineering. It is always amazing to see an elegant solution presented to lower costs! I wonder if you could scale this up to the size of a small 300x300 pixel display. Over time it could even be used to display websites with Braille text substituted to allow even higher accessibility.

[@vjvarada]

Thankyou! Im sure with more work, that would be possible to do! If we can automate the coil winding process, which is the most time consuming part of the system, we could do it affordably.

[@henrychan720]

@@vjvarada Have you considered using high layer count PCBs for the coils? kzbin.info/www/bejne/hImaeHunppdrq7c&ab_channel=CarlBugeja

[@Andreas-gh6is]

I don't think this is possible to a useful degree with that technology. The nature of haptic devices like this is that the user still needs to actively select the part of the device he is "listening" to, which also means the dots should be presented at higher resolution if used in 2D. If it's just multiple rows of braille, that's not that useful because you could as well "scroll" or navigate digitally. Those dots still consume quite a bit of room, especially because of the coil. If you make the dot smaller, it will get harder to manufacture, especially by hand. But the coil can't be made much weaker because it will need to have a minimum force to push that cam and overcome the resistance that provides the staticness of the dot. Additionally, the more coils there are per area, the more issues of parasitic currents, inductance or magnetic force occurs. A big 2D matrix of these coils may just not work the same way a single or double braille row would work.

[@MrMaxwell]

Great video. Sharing this with all my Blind friends so they can see it

[@ripedroso]

Great project! Helping the world a best place!

[@iainburgess8577]

Holy hells! Thats Genius! Id played w a braile display improvement before; its a big need, and i couldn't crack it conceptually. You have!

[@vjvarada]

Thankyou!!

[@happyloper]

I did a training course for computer instructors for the blind. It was the first time I met them and learned a lot. Everything is expensive, not only the braille display. This is something that was really needed, and I can't wait to make one and deliver it to a blind person myself! Thank you, developer.

You are a true hero, even if you do nothing else for the rest of your life!

[@vjvarada]

Quite a heavy apreciation, thank you so much!

[@sandwich2473]

This is really very cool thank you for putting the time into making such an amazing device

[@rustyhauler6477]

Excellent work

[@SolidIncMedia]

My wife, one of her brothers, her mum and my coworker's wife are all visually impaired, and I'm often disgusted at how expensive anything "for the blind" can be, whether it's just a magnifying glass that costs three times as much as the exact same one on AliExpress, or software to help blind people navigate computers, or mobility canes, it sucks that the people who need them can't actually get them because of stupidly high costs. Thank you for making these modules. I hope they really take off and are used everywhere because everyone deserves access to information.

[@frankmyers4736]

this man will change so many lives. bravo!

[@benbonnell1930]

this is so excellent, great work!

[@akhileshap9439]

Great initiative.

[@niajmorshed8245]

❤ Amazing work

[@PaulSpades]

I was also thinking about actuator solutions for braille cell displays last week. That cam mechanism locking the pins in place is definitely better than anything I could come up with, well done! And the rest of the engineering and electronics looks good. Great work!

[@vjvarada]

Thankyou so much!

[@harrykaradimas857]

This is absolutely brilliant ! Congratulations !

[@vjvarada]

Thank you very much! And thank you for Subscribing!

[@etmax1]

You are a gem, I take my hat off to you.

[@vjvarada]

Thankyou!

[@designator7402]

Oh, that is a very clever solution. Excellent work!

[@Studio23Media]

This is so cool!! You're making the world a better place.

[@vaisakh_km]

Wow, this is the kind of people the world need...

[@danielmichalski94]

This idea has huge potential. Thank you for making it real - it's an important step towards electronic devices fully prepared for blind people.

[@LordPfrog]

This is really freaking cool! Great project and great video summary!

[@ruthlessrubberducky5729]

Beautiful project man, you are the kind of person that is desperately needed! Altruistic intentions and clever inventions. Best of luck, and Godspeed to your project!

[@bisaster5471]

these types of people are the ones that deserves millions of dollars. wonderful people right here! thank you for your innovations!

[@vrixphillips]

this and the open book are really making me happy about the prospect of making the whole world literate.

[@Lena-qg8bd]

wow thank you for this, it is really good and refreshing to see this type of engineering on here. subscribed right away

[@Ernzt8]

I cannot imagine not be able to use my sight. Technology like this must be in reach for every one who needs it. Great invention!!!

[@rafaelguida2317]

Not only it's effective, but brilliant and beautiful purpose! Hope this becomes the new standard !

[@chopper3lw]

OUTSTANDING! Nicely done.

[@strangeke7750]

This is great! You’re doing something awesome my dude. Good luck!

[@jjbc5059]

Genius!!! Awesome project! I hope you'll keep working on it and make life easier for a lot of people who need this👏👏

[@xenontesla122]

Amazing! I would’ve thought that there would already be low cost braille devices, but all the devices are surprisingly expensive. Thank you for having the thoughtfulness to make this!

[@vjvarada]

Thankyou!

[@FleccaRobinson]

I'm not religious but it feels fitting to tell you you're doing God's work.

[@lazyidealist]

Incredible breakthrough. So inspiring. thank god I found this channel.

[@Sri_Harsha_Electronics_Guthik]

well done. teach em companies.

[@basilefff]

Wow, it's incredible! And thank you so much for making it open source too

[@Yamthief]

Amazing work! This doesn't directly affect me, but you're doing an amazing service to humanity.

[@The_BrickYT]

Glad you finally came back!

[@finn3721]

This is one of the most ingenious ideas that ive seen in quite a while. Well deserved win!

[@smileyp4535]

People talk about doing God's work with a lot of things like this, this is one of those times. Making things accessible in a way where the goal is to make it affordable and not just for profit, that's God's work man. The world thanks you for this! Keep it going man! You are a saint for this!!!

[@radishdalek]

The mechanism is genius. This will help so many - Thank you

[@BBayjay]

This is brilliant, your goals are admirable. I love it!

[@googleyoutubechannel8554]

The cam bit is the genius here over previous designs, well done.

[@MrGRockin]

This is amazing thank you for helping others and breaking down the systems that cost people in need so much.

[@Argosh]

What a wonderful project! Thank you for making the world better!

[@richard25473]

Thank you for spendig this much time making something that’s (potentally) life changing!

[@hobbycollector]

Very clever, such a good work. People like you make the world a better place

[@bocarlsson3rd]

This is super awesome. It gives me so much hope for the future when cool people uses cheap and available technology to make life better for people. It reminds me of the guy who made super cheap and handpowered malaria testing kits or the guy who is creating a system for custom 3d-printed prosthetics. My dad have greatly reduced hearing and if we didn't live in a country with subsidized Healthcare he would never be able to afford hearing aides. So this kind of hits home. Dedicating time to make tools available and economically accessible to people is honorable and I hope this will lead to more funding so you can do good without worrying about your personal economy. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. The world need more people like you. /Bo Carlsson

[@KD-_-]

This is awesome work

[@ooocarneiro]

Wonderful!!! Congratulations!

[@2011killjoy]

Commenting for the sole purpose of boosting this video. This is actually incredible and you have done a service to humanity. I'm not blind or visually impaired but still, from everyone, thank you.

[@coco805]

Wow I had no idea braille cells were so expensive. Your design changes wtih the eccentric cam are very clever!

[@aldopro23rex]

There are lots and lots of valuable inputs to the electronics industry running for the prize but I honestly think the humanitarian aspect of this project trumps over the ingenuity of many other ones. Exceptional execution of a simple yet most overlooked idea. Awesome!

[@shariqueansari2959]

Simply amazing. Thanks for making it.

[@helmutzollner5496]

Wow! Great project.

[@vjvarada]

Thank you! Cheers!

[@jakobfindlay4136]

Beautiful work bringing cost down I had no idea a decent model was like $3,000

[@giatomm]

This is an incredible work!

[@lucdrouin2625]

NAMASTE! You are a rare example of an intelligent and also wise person!

[@Brett3am]

Amazing project with a beautifully designed board. It is incredibly honorable of you to offer the source so anyone can build this... you ancestors smile upon you!

[@NickDoddTV]

awesome design and very impressive to give away the design so people anywhere capable can manufacture them by themselves with 100x plus savings!

[@FortWhenTeaThyme]

I'm so glad to see this! I've been doing research on the side to create exactly this after seeing how stupidly expensive these braille readers are.

[@jonaboe-i5n]

This changes everything. Good job!

[@rcmaniac25]

That is amazing! Simple an effective is just what this kind of tech needs.

[@vjvarada]

Thankyou!

[@Goodish_night]

I don't know anyone who is blind or reads braile, but man you're doing incredible good and lofe changing work. God bless you man, i can't imagine how many peoples lives you'll change if this is widely adopted

[@raxathor]

Awesome, so cool!

[@vjvarada]

Thankyou!

[@vishva8kumara]

This is something I have been thinking for a long time, but never took initiative. True, there is not a big market for this. Your manufacturing process is very good.!~

[@tread140]

More people need to see this.

[@conall5434]

Awesome work! Super cool project!

[@egeres14]

Why doesn't this video have more views? I think it's super relevant and an amazing work for humanity in general. Thank you for advancing the field of braile displays!!

[@vjvarada]

Thank you so much!

[@Jdog1681]

Hardcore man. Amazing work

[@Xiltch]

This is amazing. I love seeing these kind of projects that are the complete opposite from the normal greed that drives most manufactoring to benefit a group of people.

[@robinbinder8658]

You deserve some medal for this. Amazing

[@daverei1211]

You are amazing. I knew a guy back in 90’s who was a system admin on a DEC VAX mini computer (vt100 compatible ascii terminal display). He had a braille terminal. It was amazing to see him work. Your affordable solution is inspiring. Thank you.

[@vjvarada]

Thankyou! And thats an amazing story! thanks for sharing!

[@MatheusCarvalho-ev9hw]

Well done, I am spreading the word already.

[@toshibe2805]

This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long time.

[@barry-allan]

Thank you so much for designing this, I've been thinking about how to make on of these for years. but you finally put it into the world. you have the peoples support, can't wait to see what comes from this.

[@Scyth3934]

Wow!!!! This is a brilliant invention and I'm sure it will be really useful to the blind!

[@MPHammy98]

This is a really cool idea!!

[@plinkage]

just yesterday i was thinking how cool it would be if you could passively learn braille by somehow having it display subtitles of videos watched. this is dope.

[@georgejackson4105]

This guy deserves a Nobel Prize! Truly he does!

[@diego.alienigena]

very interesting 👏👏👏

[@jamiehobbs3750]

Amazing!

[@98xjdriver]

This is cool. I repair Perkins Braillers and can appreciate all the intricate mechanical engineering you did.

[@vjvarada]

Thank you so much! Ive seen Perkins braillers before, the analog ones are built like a tank! Thank you for your comment!

[@ernestocurty1]

Wonderful design! Congratulations

[@ericlotze7724]

Absolutely Amazing! *Another* Application of Cams and as you said it’s almost like a 3D Flip Dot! Accesible technology is HUGE too. My hands are probably a bit too shakey from my essential tremor to make these, but maybe with a Makerspace, or buying on Crowd Supply / Tindy i could get some for local schools. I know my elementary had a specialized department for assisting kids with disabilities so things like this mag be of use! Again I can’t state enough how amazing this work is, and I’m excited to see where this goes and potentially collaborate!

[@vjvarada]

Thank you so much! I hope to make the design easier to build over time. You can check the project page for updates: hackaday.io/project/191181-electromechanical-refreshable-braille-module

[@asapfilms2519]

Bro you are a genius.

[@vjvarada]

Thanks 😅