What?

 

Every year, JumboCode - Tufts’s pro-bono software club - holds JumboHack, a 36 hour hackathon based on a few themes. I wanted to hack, but I didn’t want to code, so I assembled  a few CS buddies with the goal to create some tech that included software and hardware: a BrailleBot. Send it a PDF of text in English, and it’ll “emboss” that message onto paper in Braille. 

 

Why?

 

This topic was the crossroads of our interests. It involved software, it involved good old mechanism design, and it was socially beneficial. We wanted to make a low-cost, highly portable Braille translator that smaller businesses and individuals could purchase and use. We didn’t end up following through with commercialising this, but that was the idea. 

 

How?

 

Our BrailleBot uses a rack and pinion to emboss a message onto paper. The end of the rack holds a servo motor that has each of the six dots that Braille uses. We produce each character by rotating to and subsequently embossing the required dots.

 

This means that some characters take longer to emboss, as if there are 6 dots, then we need 6 rotations for just one letter. By employing this approach, however, we find gains in space efficiency and ease of manufacturing. 

 

What did I learn?

 

This was my first hackathon, and I was the only full-time MechE in our group: a lot had to be done in a short amount of time, so I needed to work fast. I had learned to get scrappy, work with what worked, and move quickly.