12-year-old makes low-cost Braille printer – with LEGO

Another case of endless possibilities: putting together a 12-year-old and a set of Lego bricks.

A seventh grader in the United States built a low-cost Braille printer out of Lego bricks as his science fair project, tech site CNET reported.

Now, Shubham Banerjee's printer dubbed "Braigo" could be used in developing countries due to its cost—well below that of existing Braille printers at $2,000 and up.

"Banerjee isn't content to just sit on his creation. He is in the process of making it all open-source so people anywhere can create their own Braigos and advance the software to extend its capabilities. He hopes it will be particularly useful in developing countries where it's simply not practical to buy an expensive braille printer," CNET reported.

CNET said Banerjee's project used a $350 Lego Mindstorms EV3 kit and "a few bucks worth of hardware from Home Depot."

It said the printer was made with a basic, preexisting pattern for a printer along with new software and hardware enhancements to print out letters in braille.

"You choose a letter and it prints it out with tactile bumps on a roll of calculator paper. The print head is actually a thumbtack, which Banerjee settled on after also testing a small drill bit and a mechanical pencil," it added.

While the first prototype is not too fast, it is a proof of concept, allowing Banerjee to work on "improvements that will allow it to print full pages of text," the CNET report said. — VC, GMA News