In July 2024, Andrew Xu and Ethan Hu, two middle school students from San Diego with a love of robotics, were searching for a science project to collaborate on when the proverbial lightbulb went off. They were randomly watching YouTube videos and heard former prototype developer Zack Freedman mention that embossing machines that create braille books cost thousands of dollars. With their knowledge of coding, robotics, and 3D printing, they figured they could build a low-cost, portable version, and immediately set to work.
Over the course of a few months, they built a few prototypes, constructing everything but the metal parts with a 3D printer. Using an open-source microprocessor, they wrote a program that could convert words typed on a laptop into braille printed on a page. To produce those braille dots, a digital signal travels from the laptop through wires connected to circuit boards connected to more wires that lead to a plotting device. A motor then causes an ordinary pencil with a sewing needle inserted and epoxied at one end to punch out letters in braille on a piece of paper. Since the braille dots appear on the reverse side of the paper, Andrew and Ethan had to program the machine to write backwards, so when the paper was flipped over, words would appear in correct order, all seemingly routine for the boys. The entire apparatus, they said, cost about $200 in materials.
In February, they brought their machine to Braille Institute for feedback. Three staff members, including two who are visually impaired, checked out the machine and verified that they could read the braille. “We were also able to see an actual embosser,” says Andrew. “It was really big.”
Andrew and Ethan next entered the machine into the Greater San Diego Science and Engineering Fair in March, winning first place in the Engineering: Electrical, Mechanical, and Robotics category and the Grand Award for Physical Science in the middle school division. Next up was the California Science and Engineering Fair in April, where they won second place in the Electronics and Electromagnets category plus the Broadcom Coding with Commitment Award.
Unlike many entrepreneurs who are eager to monetize their breakthroughs, Andrew and Ethan have decided to give away the plans for making their portable braille embosser. “We want this to be accessible for anyone for cheap,” says Andrew, as they believe strongly in an open-source culture, especially when the goal is to help people. Andrew and Ethan also surprised Braille Institute when they donated $200 from their science fair winnings to the organization. In July, they visited the San Diego center to present a check and to speak about their machine. “Braille Institute helped us, so we wanted to help them,” says Ethan. “The end goal is to help more people with blindness be more independent.
“We spent a lot of time on it and it’s really satisfying to see it work,” shares Ethan. “Another thing we really like about it is its simplicity, because it doesn’t require a lot of maintenance, which means that you don’t have to have a lot of technical knowledge to use it and keep it maintained.”
