A Hardware Based Braille Note Taker

This paper describes a Braille note taker implemented in hardware. The system is able to perform Braille to text translation as well as note taking. A method is presented on how to achieve Braille note taking using a Braille keyboard. To perform Braille to text translation, a translating system has been built based on previous work. Using very high speed integrated circuit hardware description language (VHDL) and a field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) development platform, a system that includes the keyboard controller and translator has been hierarchically described and implemented.