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Yujun Lee’s Status Report for March 16th, 2024

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?

  1. After finishing the braille translation algorithm. I created Test cases and tested the braille translation. The translation was able to reach 100% accuracy based on 70 different test cases. Grade 2 braille translation is still on the work, and it will be finished by Sunday.
  2. Created a braille display function which allows us to visualize the translation encoding output to see whether the algorithm is outputting the correct output to the board before we start to implement the software to the hardware. Example of the algorithm displaying the encoded output of the text2braille algorithm with the input “Hello World”. 1 denotes actuation, 0 denotes the opposite, “x” denotes new word.

Is your progress on schedule or behind?

Our progress was behind this week, but we were able to make amends by placing all our orders immediately on Monday, and having the braille translation algorithm be ready for implementation. We were able to test the braille algorithm in a speedy fashion. Since the progress this week went through in a fast pace, I am planning to run more test cases in my free time to make sure I didn’t miss any edge cases. 

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

For next week, I will code the arduino which we ordered this week so that the braille encoding are properly mapped to the motor. Furthermore, I will implement the speaker library to the arduino code to read out the arduino input.

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Yujun Lee’s Status Report for March 9th, 2024

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?

  1. After finishing the planning and structuring for the braille translation algorithm, I finished a initial version of the diagram representing the user-flow of the web-app.
  3. Design report writing.

Is your progress on schedule or behind?

Our schedule ended up being behind due to a teammate’s incompletion of the report, yet the set back is trivial and we have finished the final version of the design report. To make sure none no more set backs are in the future, we plan to communicate more effectively over slack and make sure to have a meeting an hour or two before any deliverable due date to ensure that we are all on page and everyone is on track with the work division requirement for the specific deliverable.

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

Even though it is not a specific deliverable, I plan to familiarize myself with web development through reading through flask libraries and web-app implementation tutorials. Moreover, I plan deliver a test plan for the braille translation algorithm, including the test cases, and the tester python file to ensure its robustness before integrating with the hardware.

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Ziyu Li’s Status Report for March 9th, 2024

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?

  1. I detailed the layout of the device in CAD to get a better sense of how different parts will fit into each other. I also cleaned up the CAD a lot to make it fabrication ready.
  3. Design report writing.

Is your progress on schedule or behind?

The progress is on schedule as long as we can start 3D printing on Monday.

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

3D printed design with different size / slope / … (every CAD parameter mentioned in the last report) and a report of how well each is functioning.

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Team Status Report for March 9th, 2024

What are the most significant risks that could jeopardize the success of the project?

This remains the same as last week. As we carry out our fabrication test next week, we will have more detailed insights to this question.

Were any changes made to the existing design of the system?

Same as above.

A: Global Factors

The development of an open-source, DIY-able refreshable braille display represents a significant advancement in making reading and digital communication more accessible to visually impaired individuals globally. By prioritizing affordability and ease of construction, this project addresses a crucial gap in the market, where existing devices are often prohibitively expensive, thus limiting access for many around the world. This initiative not only empowers individuals with visual impairments by providing them with the tools to build their own reading devices but also fosters a sense of community and innovation through shared knowledge and resources.

B: Culture Factors

The integration of cultural factors is essential for ensuring its accessibility and usability across diverse communities. Through our open source software, user can easily import customized characters set and text2braille converter, allowing the access to braille education to a diverse community of the visually impaired population. Our project’s braille converter mechanism and translation software also utilizes the unified standard grade 2 braille structure, making sure all the blind communities are benefited. One of the goals of our product is to address the comparatively low literacy level among the blind population.  As our project attempts to bridge the gap in literacy level between those who are blind and those who are not by teaching braille through technology, it allows the blind community to have access to language as much as the others. To add on, it is to be noted that culture for the blind, especially those who are innately blind, is under represented due to their lack of access to written verbiage. By providing them a tool to develop their command of written language, it strengthens their cultural interactions and representations to the world.

C: Environmental Factors

The environmental impact of creating a DIY refreshable braille display is significantly mitigated by its open-source and locally producible design. This approach reduces the carbon footprint associated with manufacturing and global distribution of commercial devices, since materials can be sourced locally and devices are built on-demand, minimizing waste. Furthermore, this product will allow for users to input any text file and subsequently be able to read the braille translation, as compared to depending on physical, paper print. This will reduce the dependence on paper for the visually impaired population and further contribute to mitigating environmental waste.

A: Written by Ziyu

B: Written by Yujun

C: Written by Samay

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Ziyu Li’s Status Report for Feb 24th, 2024

This week I spent a lot of time in CAD software designing our new actuator.

Since we need to rapidly fabricate and test these actuators in different configurations (slider slope, material, lubricate method, form factor of actuator), great care is taken account to parameterize the design (which is both time consuming and rewording for me as a first timer).

One additional thing to emphasize in this report is the original source of this clever mechanism. During this week’s design presentation, I cited the original video from Ulmas Zoirov in the presenter’s note, but not on the slide itself, and this created unintentional confusion about the source of the idea. I apologize for this major oversight, and wanted to emphasize that this is Ulmas Zoirov’s idea, and we mainly want to iterate on this and engineer his vision in real life (since no physical device of this design is ever made, and we could not find further information on the future of his project).

For next week, I will be fabricating these CAD parts using resin 3D printers and experiment with the actuation by hand, to provide an initial feasibility analysis. I will also work on a much more formal and much more in depth design document.

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Yujun’s Status Report for Feb 24th, 2024

This week, I mainly dealt with our change in design for the braille printer. I began coding the braille translation in python and is able to change each braille pattern into a 6 bit data encoding.

Furthermore, I researched more into brailles and found that grade 2 brailles are used commonly for experienced braille readers and it is normally the grade of braille used in the public. There are 26 new patterns that have to be incorporated for grade 2 braille and they serve as abbreviations for commonly used sequence of letters. While my plan is to implement grade 2 to our braille learning tool, it could be against the purpose of the project which is to start with basic braille and allow the students to have a easy jump into the braille language.

In order to stay on schedule, I am to start learning how to convert the python logic into one that is applicable to the arduino used for our hardware.

Next week, I am planning to discuss the use of grade 2 braille with my teammates and decide on whether to implement it to our code or not. Furthermore, it is our plan to fully decide on how to decode these braille encodings back into patterns for the sliders to read and display (most likely through the uses of multiplexers and decoders).  In other words, we are to have a concrete idea on the functionality of the programs needed for the hardware as the software next week, and finish purchasing the hardware components needed for the project. Personally, I have to come up with a way to decode the encoding into a readable format for the hardware.

 

What is Braille? [Your Guide to Braille] - Braille Works

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Team Status Report for Feb 17th, 2024

What are the most significant risks that could jeopardize the success of theproject? How are these risks being managed? What contingency plans are ready?

The most significant risks are the components we are able to find and afford in terms of size and power. Our main issue is the small spacing of each braille cell from each other. However, we have found at least two backup plans of actuators we can assemble ourselves in case the sliders don’t work.

• Were any changes made to the existing design of the system (requirements,block diagram, system spec, etc)? Why was this change necessary, what costsdoes the change incur, and how will these costs be mitigated going forward?

There were changes made to the block design and implementation approach as referenced above. We have shifted to a more elegant and simpler design approach which address our power and size concerns for now. The 3D printed sliders will have engravings that at different positions engage each unique combination of 3 pins per each braille column. This eliminates the need for small actuators for every single pins.

• Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred

There have been no changes to the schedule so far, since we shifted and caught up this week. We will observe our progress this following week and adjust the schedule then, if necessary.

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Samay’s Status Report for Feb 17th, 2024

This week, I spent a significant amount of time on refining our implementation plan as we approach our design review this upcoming week. In particular, our team had many concerns about both the size and power issues of our initial plan to use an array of actuators that each control each braille pin. In terms of size, there were no affordable actuators that were realistically small enough for our requirements. We also considered the power usage of the available solenoids, which require a current always to keep a pin up.

As a result, my progress was also behind for this week since we got caught in these technical issues. However, I made significant progress during a meeting on Friday with our group. I suggested we find inspiration on the internet for other methods of actuating an array of pins. This led to great team progress with a newer idea (sliders for every column that have an encoding that cycles through all combinations of pins per column).

I also contributed to the design review presentation and document by addressing the implementation plan and researching which components exactly we need. I started by looking into the types of small motors we could use to precisely control the sliders. For example, I compared stepper motors to servo motors in terms of precision, speed, power, and size. I found that there were similar size characteristics but stepper motors require less power.

Next week, I hope to first finalize an initial parts list based on our current implementation plan. I aim to also order parts to begin testing as well as begin on CAD models for the device.

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Yujun’s Status Report for Feb 17th, 2024

This week, I mainly worked on researching the hardware side of the project despite being in charge of the software due to the fact that the hardware implementation of the braille grid was more complex than we assumed.

We were behind the schedule in the beginning of the week, yet we caught up by having an extra meeting on Friday morning where we researched together and finalized our design. The only issue is that we  couldn’t order any components we thought of last week as our hardware design changed significantly.

The original design which used solenoids to push brailles turned out to be too costly in terms of power input. The amount of power it needed to hold all of the solenoids could also generate a lot of heat in the process. Thus, I presented an idea I found on the web which used a  a stepper motor which would slide a long block that contained all the braille push patterns on it.  Thus, we now only need two motors per braille cell.

In terms of the software, I pseudocode of the translation was made which takes a braille to alphabet data and translates each alphabet to 2 numbers. For each column, there are 6 braille patterns possible and for each one of them a number was assigned.

By next week, I need to finalize the translation part of the code which is only possible when we as a team finalize whether we are going to use a raspberry pi or an arduino based on the complexity of our implementation.

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Team Status Report for Feb 10th, 2024

As we are approaching the start of the designing phase of our project, we realized there are some significant risks to consider. To begin with, the minuscule gap between dots in a braille might pose some difficulties in designing the grid with the balls and require extremely high precisions when it comes to actuating them into readable brailles. As a counter measure we have a plan B being planned currently that deals with 3D printing the grid instead of looking for pre-existing hardware components.

In terms of the software aspect, it is to be noted that braille dictionary data requires a lot of memory due to the fact that the braille patterns are stored in matrix like data structure. Thus, we are planning to do the translation on the web application and then to transfer only the necessary data into the braille pad and find ways to store the data in binary structure instead of a matrix with 1’s representing the dots.

As we have not completely finalized on the components needed for the product, it is inevitable that we are prone to changes to the design. By next week we are to be fully decided on which hardware components to order as well as an analysis on the cost and scale of the order. Currently we have begun to list all the possible components that could be viable. We are going to have a finalized list by early next week and make orders by the end.  This is the initial schedule that we have proposed so far