Ultrasonic Smart Glasses: Enhancing Mobility for the Visually Impaired

Necessary tools and machines

	Soldering iron (generic)
	Hot glue gun (generic)

Apps and online services

Arduino IDE You can also use the Cloud IDE

About this project

This is my son, Jacob's STEM fair project this year in the 5th grade. He decided to do an engineering project instead of an experimental project. He wanted to invent something that would benefit handicapped people in some way. He came up with this idea for glasses that could help blind people sense if there was an object in front of them that they might hit their head on. The white cane that they use when walking is used for helping them navigate the ground but does not do much for up above. Using an Arduino Pro Mini MCU, Ultrasonic Sensor, and a buzzer, he created these glasses that will sense the distance of an object in front and beep to alert the person that something is in front of them. Simple and inexpensive to make. Credit to http://hackerboxes.com for some of the parts.

Code

• Ultrasonic Glasses for the Blind

Ultrasonic Glasses for the BlindArduino

/*
Arduino code used for the Ultrasonic Sensor Sunglasses

Jacob Gardner - 5th Grade STEM Engineering Project
*/

#define trigPin 8  // These lines assign names to values
#define echoPin 7  // so they can be easily identified.
#define buzzer 12  // These are set before the code

/* This section of code below runs only one time.
 * It enables the serial monitor to see output and
 * sets the pins to input or output.
*/ 
void setup() {
  Serial.begin (9600); 
  pinMode(trigPin, OUTPUT); 
  pinMode(echoPin, INPUT);  
  pinMode(buzzer, OUTPUT);
}

/* The remaining part of the code runs in a constant loop.
 * It triggers the ultrasonic sensor and calculates the
 * time it took for the sound waves to return.  It converts
 * the time in milliseconds into distance in centimeters.
 */
void loop() { 
  long duration, distance;
  digitalWrite(trigPin, LOW);
  delayMicroseconds(2);
  digitalWrite(trigPin, HIGH);
  delayMicroseconds(10);
  digitalWrite(trigPin, LOW);
  duration = pulseIn(echoPin, HIGH);
  distance = (duration/2) / 29.1;
  Serial.print(distance);
    Serial.println(" cm");
  
// This part of the code below determines whether to
// beep depending on the distance detected. If the object
// is within 62 start the beeps.
  
if (distance > 30 and distance < 62) { 
    tone(buzzer,100,50);  // Intermitten beeps
    }
    if (distance > 0 and distance < 31) { 
    tone(buzzer,100); // Long solid beep
  }
  else {
    }
  delay (500);
  
} 

Schematics