BrailleTooth -- Bluetooth Braille Keyboard

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Hello Everyone, I've been working on this project for a while now, and I'm excited to finally share it with the Thingiverse community. I haven't posted it here yet because I've been refining my design through prototyping, but I think the time is right with the new assistive technology challenge. This idea came about during a 3D Printathon at Brandeis University outside Boston, where a friend and I competed to create something that benefited social justice. Although we didn't have enough time to finish within 24 hours, we still managed to take second place. The actual development took me the better part of the summer. I've posted my phone cases here, but not the code or any other details. If you check out my profile and designs, you'll see that I'm all about free sharing and open source – and BrailleTooth will be fully open sourced once it's ready for market. However, I did invest a lot of time and money into this project, which put me in debt, so I'm being cautious. I'm currently beta testing the prototypes at a local school for the blind, and the students are loving it. As an engineer, not a businessman, I want to see this make it to market without profiting from it – I'm more of a Tesla than an Edison. To that end, I plan on launching BrailleTooth as a non-profit that makes, sells, and shares accessibility products. Once I can produce these in large quantities, all my designs, code, and board schematics will be fully open-sourced. My prints are designed to work without supports and single extruded on any capable FDM/FFF 3D printer like Makerbot, Ultimaker, or RepRap. If you want to follow BrailleTooth's development and Kickstarter, check out the Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/BrailleTooth. I also own the Brailletooth.com domain, but it's not live yet – so follow me on Facebook for updates until then. Mission Statement: BrailleTooth is a company with a mission to develop and build accessibility products for the blind and visually impaired. Currently, we're working on Braille Bluetooth Keyboards that can either be part of a phone case or as a standalone wallet-sized device connected to any Bluetooth-enabled device like a tablet, phone, or computer. Smartphones are becoming increasingly empowering for the blind community – screen readers speak website contents and e-books aloud, recent developments enable computers to describe what's happening in an image, and speech recognition technologies are improving. However, speaking out what you want to type isn't always suitable, and it can be frustrating when it doesn't work well. The alternatives for fast typing on a smartphone as a blind user are unsatisfactory: carrying around a large keyboard, buying an expensive refreshable Brailler, or using a specialized app with virtual buttons – then copying over the text to the original app. This is why we propose BrailleTooth, a phone case with integrated Braille Bluetooth keyboard that lets blind users type quickly using physical buttons while maintaining a reasonable price point. The problem our idea addresses is easier accessibility for the blind. The case provides a physical Braille keyboard on the back so that the visually impaired can type on their phones without needing the phone to tell them what key is under their finger. It's time-consuming for the visually impaired to type well using a touchscreen – we've found a way to change that. Video demonstration of our iPhone Brailler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Mw84fKFbIw Print Settings: Rafts: Doesn't Matter Supports: Doesn't Matter