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5th week

A project log for Braille Clock/Watch

Creating a "digital" braille clock/watch (for blind people obviously).

braille-clockBraille Clock 04/07/2017 at 14:040 Comments

Today the fablab received motors ... but the wrong ones. Indeed, they received the continuous servo motors we wanted to order at the beginning but the stepper motors we ordered last week aren't there yet.

So, for the moment you can discover how our prototype will work :

First of all, you can see bellow our wheel with the dots. There are only 4 dots by number because braille numbers are only code with the 1 to 4 dots. The wheels here are attached to a tip which is the link between the wheel and the stepper motor.

Then all of this will be attached to the stepper motor. The stepper motor, as its name shows, will make the will turn step by step, which is exactly what we need to make a clock. We managed to find one stepper motor and measured it to take its dimensions and modelize it so we could finally launch the wheels printing.

Stepper motor Finally, here is the final model with the box. The user will be able to read each number to have the time by putting his finger on the holes and slide it . The hole dimensions are designed to prevent the user to turn the wheel by accident and then disrupt the clock.


We also started coding. But before we soldered our arduino card ! Indeed, we received it like that (photograph on the left) then had to solder it on ourselves (photograph on the right).

With the code on Arduino, we were able to make the stepper motor turn as you can see on our twitter.

Finally, we printed our first wheels. The first one in ABS plastic (left) and the second one in resin (right).

Here it is ! This was a very productive week!

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