Oscilloscope for the Blind

Written By Enabling Engineering

An accessible oscilloscope for the visually impaired. This product provides hand on learning that is 1.5x effective when teaching difficult concepts.

The Need

There are 63,000 blind students in the USA where hands-on learning is 1.5x effective when teaching difficult concepts. Electrical Engineering is already difficult and there are almost no standard tools that are accessible for the blind.

The Solution

The primary solution was to design an oscilloscope with haptic feedback. The device consisted of a tablet and a stylus with the stylus vibrating on contact with the tablet. The device paired a haasoscope, a cheap and fully open-sourced oscilloscope, with a Wacom Tablet and Pen. The pen was modified with an affixed haptic motor driven by a floating cable. A custom PCB board was designed to add a haptic driver circuit to a Raspberry Pi. Eccentric Rotating Mass (ERM), which provided stronger vibrations, and Linear Resonant Actuator (LRA) motors, which provided sharper effects, were incorporated with custom driver software written to pair the motors with the hassoscope. Overall, the device allows for data visualization using haptic feedback allowing users with visual impairments to analyze electrical data easily.

The Team

  • Nicholas Fantasia

  • Nicholas Mullikin

  • Connor Northway

  • Alex Marley

Enabling Engineering
Previous

Blind Navigation Map
Next

ASL Translator App