Shubham Banerjee Builds Braille Printer With Lego Mindstorms & Surface Pro

The curiosity to find out how the blind people read, led this 13 year old boy Shubham Banerjee to find out how the Braille Language uses raised dots. He started researching on the topic and found that traditionally most braille printers are priced at $2000 or higher. That's a huge cost for something that's so commonly used. (Stats suggest there are more than 280 million people suffering from visual impairment across the world.) Shubham loves Lego and thought of an idea that could put his favorite toy to create an alternative low-cost Braille Printer. Using the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 tablet and therefore Windows OS, the first Brailler Printer called 'Braigo' (short for Braille + Lego Mindstorms) came to life. It was priced at $350 and to make it easy for anyone to build it on their own, Shubham put up easy to follow DIY instructions online. The encouraging feedback he received was tremendous and there were many requests for launching a ready-made version. And so, Braigo 2.0 was born.


Powered by the new Intel Edison chip, Braigo 2.0 is now an IoT enabled, silently running Braille Printer. The printer can be used by the blind for printing documents for offline reading wherever they want. Govt. Institutes and private banks or postal services can use Braigo to provide accessibility services for the visually impaired customers. Shubham is working with folks over at Microsoft for integration of the Braigo drivers with Windows so that the process of deployment becomes easy.

Check out a video featuring Shubham Banerjee from Braigo Labs Inc. @ Intel Capital Summit 2014 -

What are your thoughts about the new brailler printer? Share with us in comments below.

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