Inspiration
Renee Kakareka, co-founder, grew up having several friends who are deaf or hard of hearing. At age 7, Renee learned sign language in order to communicate with her close friends. Since then Renee has dedicated her college education and career to designing for individuals who have disabilities. Yashira Rivera, co-founder, is a philanthropist with a background in fashion design. In the past 10 years she has used her creative talents in assisting communities around the United States. Together they intend on giving those with disabilities sense of home by providing them assistive devices that are both functional and fashionable. Their first product, FreeBell, are smart glasses to enhance the abilities of students that are deaf or hard of hearing.
What it does
FreeBell are smart glasses that caption voices in real-time on a heads-up display that hovers over the user’s eye. In addition to the captions, color-coded directional arrows are displayed on the lens indicating where sound is coming from. This allows the user to better communicate in a group setting and know who is speaking to them. Paired with the smart glasses, we are developing a mobile application that utilizes the captions for personalized education. The mobile application also has settings where the user has the ability to control the microphones that are embedded throughout the frame.
How we built it
The frame is 3D printed and the software utilized to complete the design and software process are: Adobe XD, Auto Desk, and Arduino 101 with codex audio.
Challenges we ran into
We are in the process of working on the microphones that are located throughout the frame of the glasses.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We have received many awards including from Publicis 90, Jefferson, and many more. In the past 2 months we have produced a functioning minimal viable product using pre-existing smart glasses the, Rekon Jet, which are used for cycling. We have also created a design for the glasses and wire-frames/sofware for the mobile application.
What we learned
We each have our own experiences and have grown as a team tremendously. Designing smart glasses is very challenging on both a technological and design level. Each day we run into various challenges and continue to rely on each other on many levels. With our team work we believe that we have the ability to achieve greatness. Besides, knowledge is power.
What's next for FreeBell
We are in the process of launching a crowdfunding campaign, #FreeBell , so we are able to continue on with the production of the device. Once we have a developed prototype (December 2016), we then want to have a fully functioning product by October of 2017. Once FreeBell is fully integrated we intend of implementing our device into lower income communities around the world.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.