This week, I finished my sections for the design report. We reworked our design, so we talked through the pros and cons of the two designs before deciding on the one to focus on in the design report. They are both made with similar components, so we would be able to pivot to the backup design if necessary. We are a little behind with ordering materials, but will remedy that this week during class but sending in order forms. For storage of our device, I reached out to tech spark to get our group and assigned box. By the end of the week, I hope to have the CAD done and 3D print started.
Team Status Report for October 18th
The most significant risk that could jeopardize the success of our project is the implementation of the embosser system. Most of our design is still theoretical, and we haven’t had the opportunity to test it yet. This component is critical to achieving our MVP, so failing to develop a functional embosser would halt all work. If our initial design does not work as intended, our plan to manage this risk is to modify our system to resemble an existing braille label embossing design. The trade-offs would be slower outputs and this design takes up more space. However, this approach would ensure functionality.
As we finished our Design Report this week, we revised our embosser mechanism to ensure that our device can shift the label media while preserving previously printed text. This update involved integrating an additional motor. All of these changes were reflected in the Design Report. We hope to test this new design soon, and as previously mentioned, we have a backup plan in case this method fails to produce accurate results.
For the most part, our schedule remains the same, with the exception of our CAD design. This week, we hope to complete our CAD design of the embosser system and begin the prototyping and integration process.
A was written by Francesca, B was written by Abby and C was written by Bella.
Part A: With regard to global factors, our design keeps in mind those who are blind or visually impaired. Beyond the simple fact that we are aiming to print in braille, which is targeted or those with visual impairment, we are taking further factors into account, such as the fact that tactile design will be absolutely critical in providing the device to audiences who cannot otherwise see. Our intention is to make the device as easily usable and accessible as possible– simple enough for children, older adults, and those not technologically savvy to understand. We intend to work with the Office of Disability Resources and the Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children to ensure we achieve these goals.
Part B: Our system is using the simplest conversion of letter to Braille character. For different languages, there exist different short-hands for commonly used words and phrases, but to keep the language accessibility as wide as possible, we will not be including this. In addition, we are using Unified English Braille which is currently being moved to be the universal set of Braille characters. One area where our design culturally falls short, is we are using our OCR to recognize the Latin alphabet. This could be addressed as a stretch goal, but realistically, our scanner will be able to recognize languages that use that alphabet.
Part C: There are several ways our project will be approached considering environmental factors. To reduce our environmental impact, we sourced components such as our microprocessor from within the department, which not only saves us money, but it also reduces transportation related emissions. Another way we are keeping the environment in mind, is by using recycled or biodegradable materials wherever possible for our prototypes. From a design perspective, we are aiming for low power consumption from our device. Perhaps, by integrating a sleep mode or another method to keep wasted power to a minimum. Additionally, our device will be powered by rechargeable batteries, rather than disposable ones and helping to lower long-term environmental waste.
Bella Woodard’s Status Report for October 18th
This week my work consisted of working on the Design Report. My contributions were the “Design Trade Studies”, “System Implementation”, and “Project Management” sections.
My work isn’t necessarily behind, but I’m concerned that we might not be able to begin integration this week, which is our goal. The main reasons are possible delays in part arrivals and ongoing correspondence with the Office of Disabilities.
Next week I hope to build embossing head and frame prototype, as well as, purchase a battery pack and charging board to integrate with our microprocessor.
Francesca’s Status Report for Oct 18
This week, I finished my sections for the design report. With the entire group, we reworked our design components, and were deciding between a one motor and three motor implementation. We decided to focus on one as our actual plan in the design report, and the other would be a backup contingency plan. We decided that it would be easy to pivot between the two implementations so long as we have the components, so we budgeted for several motors in our plan. We’ll be able to quickly reprint small 3D printed parts on campus on demand, so we are not worried about this part. We are a bit behind on ordering parts, as Abby mentioned. The original plan was to submit this to our TA over fall break, but this ended up not happening. We’ll order the parts in class this upcoming week, and we can still test software like Tesseract or CAD designs in the meantime, so I am not too worried about this. This coming week, I hope to help my teammates with the CAD and 3D print, but on my end, I would like to spend my time testing Tesseract so we know that our OCR software is extremely reliable before we start physically building the device in coming weeks. I’m hopeful we can find a way to automate such testing, which was suggested by a TA during our proposal presentation.
Team Status Report for Oct 4
This week we presented our completed design presentation. We decided to move forward with the 3D printed/motorized version and will begin CADing. This route can be risky for making it strong enough to emboss and meet braille standards, but to mitigate this, we have a simpler back-up plan. This back-up plan is also accounted for in our budget. We are currently on schedule and our design hasn’t changed from last week. We worked on the design write-up and will continue doing so this week to complete it. Now that we are through the proposal and design, we are moving forward to ordering components and reaching out to disability resources to receive feedback.
Bella Woodard’s Status Report for October 4th
This week we finalized our microprocessor choice, I helped complete our Design Review Presentation, and did the peer grading for other teams.
We’re a bit behind schedule. We had hoped to get CAD model done before our presentation, and I still need to order the camera and other hardware in order to begin integration. We’re also behind on contacting the Office of Disabilities and the Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children, which we need to do soon.
Next week I plan to finish the CAD design in SolidWorks, complete the Design Report, order/request hardware components, and reach out to our stakeholders for feedback
Abby’s Status Report for Oct 4
This week, I finished work on the slides and worked on the script for our design presentation. I presented our design on Monday. We continued to work on the written proposal.
Francesca Cain’s Status Report for October 4th
This week, I helped Abby to finalize the slides provided for our design presentation, and we thought further about how we are gong to model and implement our final design. In the days leading up to our design presentation, we decided to not go the route of motorizing a pre-fabricated part bought from Amazon. Instead, we will be using a custom built pin-dropping mechanism, using small motors, to emboss the labels. Since a braille character has two columns with three rows, the mechanism will use only three pins with actuators to print labels. Going forward into next week, since our design is now finalized, the real work is able to begin of interacting with Tesseract and checking its reliability, finalizing hardware orders, and making contact with the Office of Disability Resources and the Western PennsylvaniaSchool for Blind Children
Bella Woodard’s Status Report for September 27th
This week my contributions included:
- Updating our Gantt to reflect current progress and adjusted timelines.
- Meeting with our professor and TA to finalize design choices
- Conducting research into OCR methods
- Researching options for our devices battery
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Researching mini keyboard implementation
meeting notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18jFJak_XMeZI0KY7Eypdu9q5hxDXurklSiYy3uhaF_I/edit?usp=sharing
Our progress for the design presentation is on schedule. However, I think we our behind in some research aspects. Specifically, in terms of outreach to members of the blind community.
Next week we hope to gather feedback from CMU’s office of disabilities and the Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children, develop a SolidWorks model of the embossing mechanism, and update our block diagram to reflect finalized components.
Abby’s Status Report for Sep 27
This week, I helped work on the slides and document for our design presentation. Since I am presenting this one, I also practiced it to make sure I had a good grasp on all aspects of it and was prepared for questions. I also worked on ways we could go about making the embosser, using inspiration from online open source projects. I believe using the existing handheld embosser might be easier, but because of the timing issue, I agree with moving forward with the pin method first.