Glenn Johnson, an electrical engineer, wanted to help his sister. She has cerebral palsy, which makes it difficult for her to manipulate modern electronics. Glenn’s goal was to modify a Kindle into a gadget his sister could use.
He took the controls from a children’s V.Reader, which has large controls that his sister could use easily. Each silicone button on the V.Reader has two wires attached. He routed those wires into the Kindle’s interface board. The result is a Kindle that can be manipulated by his sister. He calls his gadget the Frankenkindle.
This is what your completed Frankenkindle will look like.
To program the Teensy++ board, you'll need the Arduino software, as well as a utility to program the Teensy itself.
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Siri: "I'm sorry, but I could not find any credit unions for dragons in your area."
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Two of my daughters earned their medical degrees in the area of therapy for brain-damaged and otherwise severely disabled patients, many of whom could, and some of whom already do, benefit greatly from voice recognition technology. Many of us interact with similar technologies when we pay bills or do our banking by phone. We have come a long way since Clarke's Minisec and Comsole, further since Vannevar Bush's Memex, yet both dreams have yet to be fully realized.
You'd think that someone could manage to make stuff older people can use for a not too insanely high price. So far, that doesn't seem to be the case. What really gets me is, some Boomers can well afford better stuff, but so far marketers seem to be still aiming at my mother's Depression-Era generation. In either case, the quality is not what it could be. I'm about to go looking on Edmund Scientific's site, which will be a lot pricier than First Street or its ilk.
Good point, Tool Maker. I would imagine the Frankenkindle was designed specifically for the needs of the Gadget Freak's sister. The needs of those with cerebral palsy vary greatly. I had a friend who was able to type with one toe. Friends of his rigged up a typewriter on the floor to accommodate this need.
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