Help The Ben Heck Team Decide on a Future Build Project!

I was bent between "Minecraft" blocks and the eye seeing hat.

I love the Minecraft idea because it can be very helpful for children.

Education is very, very important... that is why we are here.

However, if we can make something that can ACTUALLY help another human potentially be able to SEE, than I choose the seeing eye hat.

Like Ben said, "...things that can help people are cool".

He helps us learn, why can't we help people be able to see?

The seeing eye hat would be the most helpful project and this is coming from someone who has the amazing gift of sight.

Proximity sensor's are cheap: FRYS.com | OSEPP

Raspberry Pi's are cheap

Stuff is cheap

- Matthew Grove

Can you provide a better link to some of these devices perhaps ? Google shop will return varying results, and AAC more commonly stands for 'advanced audio codec'.

It looks like some of these devices are basically portable 'text to speech' devices allowing you to record a text message then play it out as speech at a later point in time. Are there any other specific features incorporated into them such as predictive text engines ?

You may also want to move this suggestion to the 'Suggest a Build' section of the Ben Heck Show at:

https://www.element14.com/community/discussion/create-BHS.jspa

Hi Ben,

Ive been watching your show for years and am a huge fan of the projects that you do.  I really enjoy the adaptive game controllers that you make. I think it is incredible that you are finding ways to make gaming accessible to people with disabilities.

I am a special education teacher who enjoys finding ways to incorporate technology into the classroom.  Technology is huge in the education field.  I primarily focus my work on students with Autism.  With Autism, some students communicate through Augmentative or Alternative Communication Devices (AAC).  These are devices that produce an audio output of a prerecorded message.  Market brand AAC devices cost in the hundreds of dollars for something that is as simple as clicking one button. 

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=aac+devices&tbm=shop&*    - These are AAC devices used by students to communicate.

I've always wanted to get into DIY projects and was wondering if you could check out some of the AAC devices and maybe make a simple tutorial on how to build a simple and affordable AAC device.

Hi Ben, can you show people how easy it is to hook up a monostable operational amplifier to a buck booster to power devices without a battery source please?

I voted for the mini pinball machine.

It'd be really cool to build one with a more complex scoreboard. Instead of just driving digits it could be a dot matrix display with animations. For the space shuttle theme there could be a set of goals for a "preparing for liftoff" sequence and then a liftoff animation. Pop in some flash and we could have highscores. Add wifi and we could do leaderboards. Its all just software at that point.

It'd be even cooler to put the code up on GitHub for people to fork and use in their custom builds. I think there's a lot of creative potential behind the pinball idea.

I like the idea of the Seeing Eye hat.  Curious on what type of applications it may have even for use in the dark.  Navigation for Mines or similar where power may be lost.  Not sure on how much of the existing build relies on well lit environments or if it can operate in complete lack of light (aside from what is provided by build).

Plans fir a 3D scanner

Got to say, I'm a stickler for pinball.

Can Ben please provide a tutorial episode for OpenSCAD?

Ever since I started watching the show I've wanted the Atari portable to be sold.