Students of Vasantdada
Patil College of engineering has invented a new communicator for visually
impaired person and named it as Sancharak. The English meaning of the word
Sancharak is a communicator.
The project is
developed by 4 Final Year students of Electronics and Telecommunication engineering
department namely: Rohit Singh, Hitarth Patel, Navnath Mane and Rahul Kapoor
under the guidance of their principal DR. K.T.V. Reddy.
The team members
told us that “last year when we saw a newspaper article about a blind person
who was lodging a police complaint about the theft of his mobile phone and the
police inspector on the duty refused to lodge complaint. The reason behind not
registering the complaint as stated in newspaper article was that the police
inspector was not ready to believe that a blind person can use a cell-phone.
Instead the inspector on duty started questioning the blind person that he is
lying.”
Hence after searching on net and meeting
blind persons we came to know that the blind persons use the standard mobile
phone available in market. Even in those phones they are facing many problems
hence we thought of designing a cell-phone keeping blind people and their needs
in our mind.
By using this
communicator blind person will be able to make and receive calls and sms.
Sancharak solves most of the problems faced by blind people to use normal cell
phones. A battery level indicator, network indicator and mobile locator are
some of the featured added to the device.
Students have
used a unique concept of latching and solenoids. Blind person can easily sense
the data on the display screen made up of matrix of 6 solenoids since Sancharak
uses Braille language which blind people are familiar with.College
faculties and principal has been always motivating and supporting their
students to develop such innovative projects.
Students stated
that the display they made was the innovative part of the project and such
display was first ever display made for visually impaired person. With this
kind of display various application such as Braille watch, Braille calendar,
Braille display board, pagers, etc. Can be implemented.
Before starting this project students had
visited to blind workshop located near worli to understand the problems which
were faced by the blind persons while using the current cell-phones like no
indication for network range, no battery level indication, no feedback while
typing sms. All this problems were solved in Sancharak. Students told that the
using sound facilities in Sancharak was not the good option as it is not that
perfect and it cannot be used at publics places like railway stations, bus
stops or while travelling so it was necessary to develop such display which
would display data in Braille language. The students have also designed the 3D
model of the cell-phone so that the concept of the project can be explained
more easily. The project has also won 2nd prize at IIT-Bhu in open
hardware competition on 10th March, 2013.The project has been also
selected for the Gandhian Young Technological Innovation Award which will be
awarded at IIM- Ahmedabad on 25th March, 2013 at 8:30 am.
In the project,
whatever data is received on the Sancharak, whether it may be a mobile number of
second party or the message from the second party it will be first converted
into the Braille language and then it will be given to latches. Selection of
latches will be done by the microcontroller through decoder circuit and
accordingly the data available on the latch will be transferred to the display
section. Here as soon as the converted Braille data is given to display section
which consists of matrix of 6 solenoids then only that particular solenoid are
made active and hence the pin of only those solenoid comes up whereas the pins
of rest solenoids stay down. In this manner the complete message in Braille
format is displayed on Sancharak. And by using their sense of touch they can
easily read the message.
The same working
can be used in the various other applications for blind people like in Braille
calculator the calculated answer can be displayed on the same display. It can
be used in the Braille digital watch where instead of using LCD screens the
same invented display can be used to display the 4-digit time. In Braille
digital watch only 4 matrixes of solenoids can be used to display the time.
Also the invented display can be used in digital notice boards for Braille persons
which can be updated regularly. In future, the Braille persons would be able to
use the mobile applications in the Sancharak would be the next step of the
group. The project is under Patent process now.
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