1. Electronics Schematics
Audible Memo Board (07306)
The Project
Customer: Irene
Sponsor: Tala Hopkins
Consultant: Dr. Hopkins
Advisor: Dr. Slack
Our Customer Irene needed a calendar that she could use in spite of being blind and having a poor sense of touch in her fingertips. Our solution is a calendar that lets her easily record and playback voice messages.
The Team
Recording an appointment
Goal
To create an audible memo board that enables a blind person with some degree of neuropathy in their fingertips to keep track of appointments. This device should serve the same purpose a paper calendar would for a sighted person able to use a pen.
Left to right: Luis Piedrahita (ISE), Joel Forman (ME), Zebo Qiu (EE), Team Leader Andrew McLean (CE), Andrew Crecca (EE).
Features
The audible memo board allows the user to record and playback multiple appointments on one day. To help the user navigate the keyboard, the device includes audio prompts and confirmation for button presses. Appointments can easily be retrieved by pressing a calendar button which will automatically play all the messages that have been recorded on that day. There is also a playback button that will play all of the up coming messages automatically for the user – no need to find them on the calendar. In addition to the calendar, the board offers a memo page. This page is intended for recording things like phone numbers and it is accessed by pressing the memo page button. To announce the current day and time a clock button has been included.
USER INTERFACE
Electronics Circuit Board
Electronics
This record and playback device centers on a microcontroller with multiple interfacing subsystems. Electronics design included a noise-cancelling microphone, preamplifier, audio codec with microprocessor interface, power amplifier, and finally a speaker. The microprocessor constantly poled user-interface buttons for user control, while also interfacing with the audio stream by storing recordings in a NAND flash memory bank and playing back through the audio codec. Power supply design featured a wall-mounted supply feeding 12V to voltage conversion circuitry to provide 4 DC voltage levels needed by the electronics.
Electronics Schematics
Circuitry