We have seen people come up with all sorts of artistic and useful creations using Legos. Now, a 12-year-old seventh-grader Shubham Banerjee has created a functional braille printer using $350 worth of Legos.
Hailing from Santa Clara, Banerjee used a Minstorms kit to put together a basic braille printer. It comprises of a robotic arm which moves a module and that, in turn, pushes an attached pin onto a paper. This creates single imprinted letters on a regular calculator paper.
For now, the basic printer has to be manually prompted for every single letter and was originally created by Banerjee for a science fair. However, the idea has won a lot of fame and appreciation ever since he first unveiled it and Banerjee now plans to work on it further and expand it into a fully functional product.
The concept of such a braille printer is very intriguing because typically, prices for braille printers can cross well beyond $2,000. But here we have a basic version which costs a mere $350. Banerjee is hopeful that once improved, his braille printer can be a very affordable alternative for people in the developing countries.
The video above shows Banerjee print the word ‘cat’ using his prototype braille printer. This is yet another glimpse at the power of creativity and how it can help us turn simple things into very useful ones.
Courtesy: GigaOm
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