Speaking Taxi Meter : A project to assist the blind¶

Project by Pranav Pralhad Sawant and Aditya Shrikant Kadam

Purpose and idea behind this project¶

In India, people most often use the public transport while going around places and Taxis are the most common medium. The fare of the Taxi is based on the duration of the journey which indirectly depends upon the distance covered. The Taxi union of India decides the distance fare ratio and thus the fare is calculated. However, the current meters used in India are mechanical and can be manipulated to read a different meter value than the real ones. Also, some taxi drivers even end up demanding more money from the visually impaired people, as they are not able to read the meter values and often end up paying more. This is also the case with the foreign tourists visiting India. Although, the tourists can read the meter value, they do not have access to the meter fare ratio and have to blindly pay what the taxi driver asks for. Moreover, when it comes to change in fare regulations, all the taxi meters need to be sometimes re-calibrated which is a very time consuming process, with the meters being mechanical. Our project aims to address these issues by making the meter mechanism completely automated by taking advantage of the vast expanding internet and embedded systems domain.

Modules used for accomplishing aims¶

• DC motor : To replicate a rotating wheel of the taxi
• IR sensor : To calculate the Number of revolutions of the wheel.
• MBED chip : For integration of all the involved peripherals and logic implementation.
• MicroSD card : For storing converted voice reading.
• VS1053 : A mp3 encoder module necessary for encoding the mp3, in our case the text converted voice fare.
• Audio Jack : A jack for facilitating connection to speakers.
• Ethernet : To send a text (fare) to google translate service and get back a mp3 file(text to speech) containing the audio format of the fare.
• LCD : To display the meter reading and the corresponding fare.