Monday, November 5, 2012

Raspberry Pi board + Qt + KDE

As Nokia offered to sponsor some Raspberry Pis for the KDE project, they asked about proposals for using such devices. It turned out that my idea was selected, so here I'm waiting for the board to arrive. Thanks Nokia for sponsoring those RPis!


Since I was helping with IT stuff some blind people at a non-profit library in Buenos Aires, Argentina some years ago I remember some of the guys there carrying bulky and costly devices for simple tasks such as recording a contact phone number and saying it aloud whenever they needed to call a person on the phone. I hope the RPi being more capable than that with the help of all the available applications for the KDE environment.

What I would like to do with the RPi is leverage the KDE Accessibility project, specifically targeted for blind people. So Jovie and simon will be key players for such implementation. Given the form factor of the board, I even imagine some kind of portable device: we don't need to care regarding any display since the project's audience doesn't need it at all, and getting a small speaker can't be difficult (the board has a 3.5mm jack so I can still use earplugs as a last resort). All the more, given the GPIO pins, a Braille keyboard may be an option as well (we need just 6 keys). Stay tuned for more to come regarding this story.

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