Pseudonymous maker and educator “hey_hey_you_you,” hereafter merely “Hey,” is engaged on a system designed to make it simpler for the visually impaired to construct their very own digital creations — by making breakout boards a bit extra tactile.
“I do know there are 1,000,000 digital toolkits already accessible that make wiring simpler,” Hey explains of the mission, “however I could not discover something that tailored customary elements moderately than having its personal ecosystem of pre-built modules. Grove, STEMMA, Qwiic, Little Bits, and so on. are all nice, however they summary the circuit wiring, which makes educating the fundamentals laborious. Snap circuits make connections simple and make the wiring specific, however they’ve a extremely restricted set of modules accessible.”
Designed for the visually impaired, this prototyping system delivers circuit connectivity by really feel. (📷: hey_hey_you_you)
Hey’s seek for an appropriate prototyping system got here up quick, and there was little want to single out visually impaired college students by making them use completely different {hardware} to the remainder of the category. So, Hey set about designing their very own.
The breakout boards are designed to be modular, accepting through-hole elements in a ZIF socket and offering banana plug connections for wiring — simpler to insert by really feel than 0.1″ pin headers and jumper wires, Hey explains. Every board consists of Braille labeling for its floor and energy connections, plus raised symbols for many who do not know Braille. Three-pin boards add knowledge connections, swapping the ZIF socket for Grove/STEMMA/Qwiic connectors with the intention to adapt current breakout boards to the brand new strategy.
The breakouts embrace two, three, and multi-pin choices for elements, microcontrollers, and even DIP-packaged ICs. (📷: hey_hey_you_you)
Nonetheless bigger boards settle for microcontroller growth boards just like the BBC micro:bit. “As a result of banana cables are stackable,” Hey notes, “you’ll be able to wire a couple of connection to the pins on the microcontroller.” The biggest boards, in the meantime, settle for built-in circuits — bringing out each pin to a banana plug.
“I intend to make use of them with all my first yr college students subsequent yr. We all the time begin with crocodile clips moderately than breadboards (as a result of breadboards break their brains) however the crocs have an annoying tendency to quick while you transfer the circuit round. This could minimize that drawback out not less than.”
The mission is documented in Hey’s Reddit submit.
