Braille Buddy
A 48-hour build that teaches braille by touch. It raises each character under your fingertip and reads it aloud. First place and the ElevenLabs prize.
Role Team of five. I did the mechanical design and printing.
Built at the BME Robotics Hackathon 2026. A desktop device that raises braille patterns under your fingertip so you can learn by touch, with spoken feedback. Team of five, 48 hours, first place overall plus the ElevenLabs sponsor prize.
The weekend
Forty-eight hours, a robotics theme, build something that works and demo it. We went for accessibility: a device for learning braille.
Braille Buddy raises mechanical pins into braille characters under your fingertip, and reads each one out loud using ElevenLabs text-to-speech, so you get immediate feedback while you learn. Everything was designed, printed, wired and programmed inside the 48 hours.
We demoed it live and took first place overall, plus the ElevenLabs sponsor prize. More than the result, it was the best compressed lesson in team hardware I have had: splitting work under real time pressure and getting a physical thing from idea to stage in a weekend.
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