Shubham Banerjee, a 7th grade inventor,is seen here with his incredible NXT braille printer called the Braigo. This fantastic invention that puts braille printing into the hands of people who typically couldn’t have afforded it, has earned him an invitation to the White House Maker Faire.
Banerjee, currently 13 years old, identified a real problem with the availability of braille printers in the wild. Noticing that the printers available cost over $2000, he created a custom braille printer out of Lego mindstorms systems. His only cost $200 and is completely open source. People can download the plans anywhere and buy the parts necessary to make one at the local toy store. This is an incredible improvement over what was necessary before.
Shubham has helped and will help many people with this creation and his sharing of information, and that has earned him a personal invite to the White House. It is a wonderful lesson to observe that what started as a school science project now has Shubham on his way to Washington DC to meet with the President of the United States.
President Obama is hosting the first-ever White House Maker Faire on June 18 to recognize the contributions of makers who bring creativity and technical ability to a broad range of projects. If you are a maker or a friend of makers, please become an advocate for expanding opportunities for making and makers in your community.
To show your support for growing the maker community, we encourage you to sign the “Building Maker Communities” pledge and put yourself on the map!
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