Braille printer

Only in the Netherlands, there are roughly 250,000 people with a visual disability. About 3,000 people use braille daily to communicate. Nowadays, digital resources for those people are almost unlimited, which means that braille on paper is not very common anymore. As a result, resources to write braille are limited. Braille on paper is only used in cases where digital assets (like braille displays) cannot be used. Think about pieces of text that have to be read at a special event, song lyrics, (love) letters, books, poems, etc.

Writing in braille can be done in 3 ways:

• With a slate and stylus (€ 30)
• With a braille typewriter (€ 1200)
• With a braille printer (> € 3000)

The focus of this project is on the latter. Commercially available braille printers start around €3000, which is practically unaffordable for the private individual. That's why I decided to put a cheap open source braille printer on the market. At about one-tenth the value of commercially available devices, this is a real game-changer. The device should be able to be put together by anyone who has a little technical aptitude.

I'm still working on the manual and improvements of electronics, etc.

You can go to the Github page with all documentation (CAD-files, STL-files, source code for Arduino and program, etc.): https://github.com/simontil/brailleprinter (note, everything is in Dutch)