Touch to Text

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  The example of the physical product. It has four buttons that the child can press

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  As the buttons are pessed, the text area fills up with a log of what was mapped with the buttons.

Inspiration

The description of the vitality track inspires us. Allowing children and people with speech difficulties to participate in the larger society is a goal to promote vitality in our world.

What it does

Using a set of physical buttons, the speech-impaired person can press certain buttons that correlate to specific phrases or words that are shown on the application of the parent/caregiver. Utilizing Bluetooth technology, the user can use this product no matter the location. On the application, the user can see the messages' history and can change which words or phrases the buttons map to.

How we built it

We built this using MicroPython, Javascript, HTML, and CSS. We split up the tasks according to the journey the data would take. One person would program the Raspberry Pi Pico to detect the button pressed, as this is where the data is created. Another person would implement Bluetooth both on the Pico and the application, as this is where the data is transferred. Another person would work on manipulating this data into something meaningful, as this is where the data is processed. And finally, the fourth person would work on the user interface to display the data, as this is where the data's journey ends.

Challenges we ran into

The most significant difficulty we encountered was figuring out how to integrate Bluetooth. The microcontroller we used is relatively new to the Bluetooth environment, so there is a lack of resources on the internet. Bluetooth itself is also complicated; however, we pushed through and integrated this into our project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we were able to create a product that stands out from many others due to its physical nature. Pushing through the Bluetooth difficulties is also something we are very proud of, as this is the crux of our project.

What we learned

We learned a number of different languages, how to mix them, and how to send data over Bluetooth.

What's next for Touch to Text

Our next step is to implement ways to edit the mapping of the buttons to the phrases. A even more long term plan is to design an enclosure for the electronics that would include a battery housing. Going along with the AI improvements, we would also add ChatGPT to the website to increase awareness of speech-impaired people.

Built With

• css
• html
• javascript
• micropython