Solve : Boy makes low cost Braille Printer with Lego?

1.	Solve : Boy makes low cost Braille Printer with Lego?
Answer» It was about four years ago. 12 year old develops low cost Braille Printer with Lego and promises to give design and code for free download We don't see enough of these kind of stories. So it is worth repeating. Three or four things we can learn from this. • Don't underestimate the ability of youngsters. • Lego is a useful computer tool. • There is a need to enable handicapped with computers. • Silicon Valley still can create non-profit innovations. Quote Developed by Shubham Banerjee, a 7th grade student from Santa Clara, California. BRAIGO is a Braille Printer using Lego Mindstorms EV3. This concept slashes the price of a printer from more than $2000 to around $350 for education, teaching and home use purposes. Thus giving a more cost effective printer for the disadvantaged. Would like to know what he has done lately. Curious if he got some help vs done this all on his own. I have USED the Lego Mindstorms with USFirst.org Lego Robotics where I am a Lego Robotics Coach and if it wasnt for some adult input on the matter, pointers on what direction to go and how to achieve something showing the kids the physics & math that is beyond their scope at their age, the robots wouldnt function as well as they do. On our team we have 9 thru 12 year olds and I feel that this kid may have had a PARENT help them with this some. Its not impossible for him to come up with this on his own, but the complexity of it I have to question if an adult assisted whos an engineer etc. Someone should have an extensive interview with the kid 1 on 1 and have the kid describe every part of the design, why he chose it, and explain the programming involved to prove that he DOESNT get tripped up stumped on what he should know and run to dad for answers to questions. Anyone can make something with their kid and then back off and say that their kid did all the work as a way to promote them. What parent wouldnt want to give their kid a benefit over another kid such as down the road when applying to colleges, and in the letter sharing a half truth project as a means to leverage their kid into getting accepted to a big name college with grants etc. Sorry to say I have my doubts with this project that the kid so called did all on their own, but the credibility of this should be tested extensively to make sure the kid knows EVERYTHING about its design and can share why he chose to design it a specific way as well as explain the programming involved which the programming is simple in which you connect modules together using a Mindstorms GUI and edit the parameters of each module, but the math, logic with sensors that need calibration, and timing is difficult and how he calculated duration of motor movement or distance CALCULATION by revolutions of each of the motors to place a punches in the paper at just the right positions to be read as good braille. The programming is not an actual language where you start from scratch, but instead its simplified for kids to work with pre programmed modules/objects in which you can plug in values in the editable fields and with module/objects chained together on the Mindstorm GUI IDE it then takes that module/object structure and converts the simplistic structure back to low level instructions for the MindStorm controller which has sensor input jacks and motor output jacks and a USB port used for download/upload between PC with Mindstorm GUI. The article has some comments and it looks like he did respond to e0mail. Maybe somebody in your team would like to tray and reach him.

Answer»

It was about four years ago.
12 year old develops low cost Braille Printer with Lego and promises to give design and code for free download
We don't see enough of these kind of stories. So it is worth repeating.
Three or four things we can learn from this.
• Don't underestimate the ability of youngsters.
• Lego is a useful computer tool.
• There is a need to enable handicapped with computers.
• Silicon Valley still can create non-profit innovations.
Quote

Developed by Shubham Banerjee, a 7th grade student from Santa Clara, California. BRAIGO is a Braille Printer using Lego Mindstorms EV3. This concept slashes the price of a printer from more than $2000 to around $350 for education, teaching and home use purposes. Thus giving a more cost effective printer for the disadvantaged.

Would like to know what he has done lately.
Curious if he got some help vs done this all on his own.

I have USED the Lego Mindstorms with USFirst.org Lego Robotics where I am a Lego Robotics Coach and if it wasnt for some adult input on the matter, pointers on what direction to go and how to achieve something showing the kids the physics & math that is beyond their scope at their age, the robots wouldnt function as well as they do. On our team we have 9 thru 12 year olds and I feel that this kid may have had a PARENT help them with this some. Its not impossible for him to come up with this on his own, but the complexity of it I have to question if an adult assisted whos an engineer etc.

Someone should have an extensive interview with the kid 1 on 1 and have the kid describe every part of the design, why he chose it, and explain the programming involved to prove that he DOESNT get tripped up stumped on what he should know and run to dad for answers to questions.

Anyone can make something with their kid and then back off and say that their kid did all the work as a way to promote them. What parent wouldnt want to give their kid a benefit over another kid such as down the road when applying to colleges, and in the letter sharing a half truth project as a means to leverage their kid into getting accepted to a big name college with grants etc.

Sorry to say I have my doubts with this project that the kid so called did all on their own, but the credibility of this should be tested extensively to make sure the kid knows EVERYTHING about its design and can share why he chose to design it a specific way as well as explain the programming involved which the programming is simple in which you connect modules together using a Mindstorms GUI and edit the parameters of each module, but the math, logic with sensors that need calibration, and timing is difficult and how he calculated duration of motor movement or distance CALCULATION by revolutions of each of the motors to place a punches in the paper at just the right positions to be read as good braille.

The programming is not an actual language where you start from scratch, but instead its simplified for kids to work with pre programmed modules/objects in which you can plug in values in the editable fields and with module/objects chained together on the Mindstorm GUI IDE it then takes that module/object structure and converts the simplistic structure back to low level instructions for the MindStorm controller which has sensor input jacks and motor output jacks and a USB port used for download/upload between PC with Mindstorm GUI.

The article has some comments and it looks like he did respond to e0mail. Maybe somebody in your team would like to tray and reach him.

Solve : Boy makes low cost Braille Printer with Lego?

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