#braigo

Braigo, impresora braille con piezas de Lego: Shubham Banerjee, de 13 años, fue el creador de este instrumento http://t.co/IpCuPForCA

This 13-Year-Old Boy Invented A Lego Printer And Its Too Awesome!

This 13-year-old boy totally invented a Lego printer and its too awesome!.

This video covers a little bit more detail about the print head and shows in closeup the printing.

Watch the video below:

Developed by Shubham Banerjee, a 7th grade student from Santa Clara, California.

BRAIGO – a Braille Printer using Lego. According to WHO…

A 13-year-old boy starts his own company to develop a low-cost machine that will print Braille materials for the blind.

By Terence Chea | Associated Press – Tue, Jan 20, 2015

In Silicon Valley, it's never too early to become an entrepreneur. Just ask 13-year-old Shubham Banerjee.

The California eighth-grader has launched a company to develop low-cost machines to print Braille, the tactile writing system for the visually impaired. Tech giant Intel Corp. recently invested in his startup, Braigo Labs.

Shubham built a Braille printer with a Lego robotics kit as a school science fair project last year after he asked his parents a simple question: How do blind people read? "Google it," they told him.

Shubham then did some online research and was shocked to learn that Braille printers, also called embossers, cost at least $2,000—too expensive for most blind readers, especially in developing countries.

"I just thought that price should not be there. I know that there is a simpler way to do this," said Shubham, who demonstrated how his printer works at the kitchen table where he spent many late nights building it with a Lego Mindstorms EV3 kit.

Shubham wants to develop a desktop Braille printer that costs around $350 and weighs just a few pounds, compared with current models that can weigh more than 20 pounds. The machine could be used to print Braille reading materials on paper, using raised dots instead of ink, from a personal computer or electronic device.

"My end goal would probably be having most of the blind people ... using my Braille printer," said Shubham, who lives in the Silicon Valley suburb of Santa Clara, just minutes away from Intel headquarters.

After the "Braigo"—a name that combines Braille and Lego—won numerous awards and enthusiastic support from the blind community, Banerjee started Braigo Labs last summer with an initial $35,000 investment from his dad.

"We as parents started to get involved more, thinking that he's on to something and this innovation process has to continue," said his father, Niloy Banerjee, an engineer who works for Intel.

Shubham used the money to build a more sophisticated version of his Lego-based printer using an off-the-shelf desktop printer and a newly released Intel computer chip. The new model, Braigo 2.0, can translate electronic text into Braille before printing.

Intel executives were so impressed with Shubham's printer that in November they invested an undisclosed sum in his startup. Intel officials believe he's the youngest entrepreneur to receive venture capital, money invested in exchange for a financial stake in the company.

"He's solving a real problem, and he wants to go off and disrupt an existing industry. And that's really what it's all about," said Edward Ross, director of Inventor Platforms at Intel.

Braigo Labs is using the money to hire professional engineers and advisers to help design and build Braille printers based on Shubham's ideas.

The company aims to have a prototype ready for blind organizations to test this summer and have a Braigo printer on the market later this year, Niloy Banerjee said.

"This Braille printer is a great way for people around the world who really don't have many resources at all to learn Braille and to use it practically," said Henry Wedler, who is blind and working on a doctorate in chemistry at the University of California, Davis. Wedler has become an adviser to Braigo Labs.

An affordable printer would allow the visually impaired readers to print out letters, household labels, shopping lists and short reading materials on paper in Braille, said Lisamaria Martinez, community services director at the San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind, a nonprofit center that serves the visually impaired and prints Braille materials for public agencies.

"I love the fact that a young person is thinking about a community that is often not thought about," said Martinez, who is visually impaired.

Shubham is too young to be CEO of his own company, so his mother has taken the job, though she admits she wasn't too supportive when he started the project.

Shubham Banerjee, a San Francisco Bay Area seventh grade student, has developed BRAIGO, a Braille printer using Lego Mindstorms EV3, which slashes the price of a printer from more than $2000 to $350, thereby giving a more cost-effective printer for the disadvantaged.

By Melissa McKenzie

While most 12-year-olds play with LEGOs, Santa Clara resident Shubham Banerjee has taken his love of the building block to the next level by developing the Braigo, an affordable braille printer.

“I’ve been loving LEGOs since I was two-years-old,” said Banerjee, a seventh grader at Champion School in San Jose. “And in the mail that came to our house in December 2013, I noticed those posts that said, ‘Help the blind people with donations.’ I had no idea about braille, so I asked my parents how blind people read and they said, ‘Google it.’ Upon further research, I discovered that typical braille printers cost about $2,000 or even more, and I felt that was unnecessarily expensive for someone already at a disadvantage. Thus, I put my brain to work, and the first thing that came to mind was to create an alternative using my favorite toy. I took the LEGO model Mindstorms EV3 and devised a new kind of braille printer that’s only $350. It took me three weeks and I broke and re-assembled seven or so different types of models before settling on one and programming it.”

After configuring the mechanical motion and design by using a rapid prototyping concept, Banerjee came up with the do-it-yourself concept that selects letters “A-Z” and “Space” from the central console (“Brick”). According to Banerjee, all that’s needed to create the Braigo is a Lego Mindstorms EV3 kit, calculator paper, thumb tack and weights.

“I developed this concept as an alternative method to teach braille to students in a teaching institute or at home,” said Banerjee. “I am uploading how to build instructions so that anybody can do it ... It is a DIY concept.”

Banerjee plans to further improve Braigo by adding and improving its functionality and hopes the development community will pick up the concept and continue to enhance it. He also recently demonstrated the product at the Santa Clara Valley Blind Center where he got important feedback that will progress the product.

“They suggested other possibilities for Braigo, like making it a label printer,” he said. “They gave me small parts from a braille printer to experiment with and enhance it further. They also suggested to me to go to a specialty paper store with the samples that they gave me to further enhance the imprints.”

Even with all the interest that has been created by Briago, including articles that have been written in India West and CNET, Banerjee is continuously surprised. “The interest that I have received has been overwhelming,” he said. “I didn’t expect this at all. The first time I showed this was in my school science fair. The same weekend there was an event at the Lake Elizabeth park in Fremont where the organizers asked me to bring my model since it was so unique and show it to others. At that event, Bob Wieckowski, the California State Assembly member, recognized me with a certificate ... I cannot even count how many interviews I have given or articles that have been written everywhere.”