How did we come up on this?
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Nowadays, i can see blind people mostly in the malls working on a massage center, walking around and Crossing the streets with their ordinary cane. Sometimes, I just wondering how could they do that, or how they were able to manage living their lives everyday without having one of the most important senses in the human body, the "Sight". Our eyes is very essential in our daily living. Its one of the most beautiful thing that God gave us. Without it, We'll never see the beauty that the world has.
But how about those people without vision? The people who are visually impaired and does not able to see beauty and everything on earth.
How will you explain the color "Blue" to a blind person?
I once heard this question. Well, even I, can't simply say to him that blue is the same color as the sky, Coz' he can't even see it. I don't even have an idea how to explain it thoroughly to make a blind person visualize it in their mind.
Today's generation have so modernized technology which people have developed and created several innovations, gadgets, equipment, automation, robots, even AI( Artificial Intelligence) which can interact with humans, and etc. So we were thinking, of so many new inventions that were created to make people's work easier, how about creating a system which can help impaired people. We want to help them by creating an innovation with an applied technology. We even make something for normal people who can do so much things compared to them who have no sight, why can't we make something to help people who lacks vision. We made it possible!
Purpose of the study
The objective of this study is to help Visually impaired people to have a better way of navigating and to provide the a safety travel and also to be able to communicate with their family.We made an Electronic cane that can help them in their daily transportation from one place to another, it also enables them to detect obstacles. Whenever they need help somewhere down the road,their just one click away from their families and love ones, they can just push the message button and their loved ones will immediately receive a message about their current location via GPS.
The Following are Actual Image of our Prototype:
Materials used in this project:
Arduino Mega 2560
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Each of the 54 digital pins on the Arduino 2560 Mega can be used as an input or output, using pinMode(), digitalWrite(), and digitalRead() functions. They operate at 5 volts. Each pin can provide or receive a maximum of 40 mA and has an internal pull-up resistor (disconnected by default) of 20-50 kOhms.It is based on the ATmega1280 (datasheet). It has 54 digital input/output pins and 16 analog pins and 4 Hardware Serial Ports. This is where we downloaded the programs to make our system functional. It accommodates everything essential to support the microcontroller.
HC-SR04 Ultrasonic Ranging Sensor
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This is the HC-SR04 ultrasonic ranging sensor. This economical sensor provides 2cm to 400cm of non-contact measurement functionality with a ranging accuracy that can reach up to 3mm. Each HC-SR04 module includes an ultrasonic transmitter, a receiver and a control circuit.
There are only four pins that you need to worry about on the HC-SR04: VCC (Power), Trig (Trigger), Echo (Receive), and GND (Ground). You will find this sensor very easy to set up and use for your next range-finding project.
SIM800 GSM Module
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The SIM800 Module can achieve functions of calling, texting, GPRS communication, DTMF decoding (recognizing other's button), TTS and Bluetooth through microcomputer control that one USB converts to TTL and then connects to computer.
The board adopts DC 5-18V wide voltage to supply electricity, and it is convenient to use with your system power supply. With high-performance DC-DC power circuit and TVS protection, the system's stability is highly improved; It supports 3.3V/5V TTL level control, so it is handy to use with PC and various single chip.
This product is provided with earphone jack and microphone jack that can be used to test GSM voice call function; USB interface and Bluetooth interface of reserved chip can be extendedly used.
With SIM card electrostatic protection (ESD protection), it can protect electrostatic caused by inserting or pulling out SIM card; And This module is provided with RTC back-up battery, besides, it has NET_STA indicator light which is convenient to view the present SIM800 state.
Can be applied to remote monitoring, remote intelligent meter reading, and remote communication equipment such as intelligent household and car on-board equipment; besides, it supports 2G/3G/4G card.
DFPlayer Mini Module
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supports sampling rates (KHz): 8 / 11.025 / 12/16 / 22.05 / 24/32 / 44.1 / 48
24-bit DAC output, support dynamic range: 90dB, SNR support: 85dB
fully supports FAT16, FAT32 file system, maximum support 32G TF card, support U disk to 32G, 64M bytes NORFLASH
a variety of control modes are available. IO control, serial port, AD button control mode
radio spots language function, you can pause the background music being played. Advertising finished playing background sound continues to play back
We used DFPlayer Mini Module to give signal in case of obstacles detected and in giving information about the current location of the user.
HMC5883L Magnetometer
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The Honeywell HMC5883L is a surface-mount, multi-chip module designed for
low-field magnetic sensing with a digital interface for applications such as lowcost
compassing and magnetometry. The HMC5883L includes our state-of-theart,
high-resolution HMC118X series magneto-resistive sensors plus an ASIC
containing amplification, automatic degaussing strap drivers, offset cancellation,
and a 12-bit ADC that enables 1° to 2° compass heading accuracy. The I
2C serial bus allows for easy interface. The HMC5883L is a 3.0x3.0x0.9mm surface
mount 16-pin leadless chip carrier (LCC). Applications for the HMC5883L
include Mobile Phones, Netbooks, Consumer Electronics, Auto Navigation
Systems, and Personal Navigation Devices.
The HMC5883L utilizes Honeywell’s Anisotropic Magnetoresistive (AMR) technology that provides advantages over other
magnetic sensor technologies. These anisotropic, directional sensors feature precision in-axis sensitivity and linearity.
These sensors’ solid-state construction with very low cross-axis sensitivity is designed to measure both the direction and the magnitude of Earth’s magnetic fields, from milli-gauss to 8 gauss. Honeywell’s Magnetic Sensors are among the most sensitive and reliable low-field sensors in the industry.
- The
3 push buttonsat the top of the box is for the location info., orientation, and for sending message respectively. Theheadsetis used as an output to give an audio signal to the user.
I'm just showin' you an overview of our research study. You may find it interesting. This is how powerful technology is. It is one of the reasons why i definitely like working stuffs regarding electronics, that's why i choose Electronics Engineering. It helps me to engaged more in the world of technology, it enables us to develop new ideas and innovations, and gain knowledge pertaining to Electronics and how everything works. Also, It allows us to unleash our potential which aims to develop a device that can help the community, especially those people that are visually impaired. It enables them to break the gap between them and the society.
Meet my team..
Absolute Zero
These are my team-mates in Thesis, together with my colleagues Carlo Atienza 
Innovation makes the future brighter and a better community.
That's all for now. Hope you learned something from this. :) If you have some insights regarding this post, you can leave some comment. It would be interesting.:D
Sources:
- Arduino Mega 2560
- HC-SR04 Ultrasonic Ranging Sensor
- SIM800 GSM Module
- DFPlayer Mini Module
- HMC5883L Magnetometer
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