Most of us have grown up around the little Lego sets. We have built homes, buildings, cars, castles and yes, have also left people grabbing their feet and screaming in pain. But thing is, we have Lego to thank for giving us the first basic lessons in engineering and concept building. Twelve-year-old Shubham Banerjee, however, didn’t just stop with the castles. He went way, way beyond making him the youngest ever person to build a braille printer. The usual braille printers come for about $2,000. Shubham’s neat invention costs just $350 to build.
The seventh grader Californian of Indian origin unveiled the device at a “science fair” recently and the Braigo (a hybrid of Braille and Lego) became a worldwide sensation.
So, how did it all start? “It was around December last year. I was going through the mail we had received at home and I found one that was asking for donations to help visually-challenged people. At the time, I had absolutely no idea about Braille. Absolutely no clue,” he recollects. Shubham then went on to ask his parents how blind people read and after the little guy was told to “Google it”, he, well, learned all about the handicap.
“I had done some research and after doing some more, I found out that a typical Braille printer costs about $2,000 and above. Now, that is unnecessarily expensive for someone who is already at a disadvantage,” explains Shubham.
After that observation, Shubham, who is being called “simply a genius” by the world’s media, set out to create an alternative to the expensive printers using his “favourite toy”.
“I took the Lego model Mindstorms EV3 and devised an entirely new kind of Braille printer, all for $350,” says Shubham, who took three weeks to “break and re-assemble” close to seven different types of models, before “settling on one and programming it”.
He would take the help of his father. And despite the ‘long days’ it took for Shubham to finish the Braigo project, he, on some days, would stay awake till 2 am in the morning and would work on it after finishing school assignments. And like the budding entrepreneur he is, Shubham already believes the trouble was “worth it”. Worth every bit, because the world stands to benefit... as Shubham’s little Lego device is “free to build”, with no patents filed.
“My printer is not a consumer-oriented product and I don’t plan to market it. I plan to post the building instructions on a website (which I am creating), and anybody can buy a Lego EV3 kit and assemble one for themselves. The printer can currently print five-seven letters per second,” claims Subham.
He adds, “The project uses the base reference model known as Banner Printer that is included with EV3 set and was redesigned with totally new software to print letters A-Z. The project is named as BRAIGO v1.0, short for Brail with Lego. There are endless possibilities to add enhancements in software to make Braigo do more.” But Braille printers are not without problems. The machines use a lot of paper and they can only work with ‘heavy paper’.
“I think there is a confusion on what this is capable of. Say for example, you are in an educational institute and are teaching Braille to blind students. You need to teach them the concepts this version is a good example of a cheaper solution. Or for example, a parent who is home schooling a visually-challenged child can find this to be a cheaper solution. Obviously, this model cannot replace those industrial-strength Braille printers, which cost more than $2,000. But this will help in a small way. I discovered that they are very expensive and while developed countries sell them at subsidised prices, developing countries sell them at high prices.”
There are a few other “open source” answers too.” Braille as a language has many variants across the world. I’m providing people with a DIY approach towards a Braille printer and that gives people an opportunity to have cheaper options to teach Braille,” says Subham. He’s not done with Braigo either. “I plan to improve upon this printer further. I will keep uploading new updates on my website and will bring my friends together to develop new products.”
And probably the strangest thing about the Braigo is that its inventor, Shubham Banerjee, all of 12 and bespectacled, could go on and change the world for the blind talking complex machine development alongside fighting with his seven-year-old sister. That’s some combination!
