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See in complete darkness with touch

Stuff Made Here · 6.1M views · 2020-06-20 · 14:13

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Overview

Stuff Made Here builds a device that lets a blind person perceive their surroundings by touch, using an iPad's lidar and a mechanical tactile display driven by motors. The video walks through the build and the limits he hit.

On Hacker News

HN admires the maker's engineering and cites it in accessibility discussions, especially for the limits of sensory resolution versus perception.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2020–2023

Topics

3D printing, CNC & maker projectsMechanical & precision engineering
Search by tags
tactile displaylidarblind accessibilitymaker projectbraille

What people said

sambroner · 2020-07 · Strong recommendation

This guy is a legend. Awesome videos. A few of them seem productizable in a way most DIY-er videos don't, albeit in a limited run capacity. He made a iPad lidar to "braille" converter that was really impressive, and I'm hopeful someone picks up the work. [VIDEO]

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ryankrage77 · 2023-01 · Reference

Would it be possible to use fewer motors to control more pins? 'Stuff Made Here' made a 12-point display using two motors. [VIDEO]

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open-paren · 2022-04 · Reference

There was a Youtuber that made a device like this with the lidar from an iPad and a 3x3 grid of dots to detect obstacles. The problem he ran into was sensory resolution vs. ability to perceive that resolution. (Unsurpisingly) your eyes are unparalleled for picking up visual resolution. [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Stuff Made Here, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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