Key Takeaways
- Learning sign language just got easier with Raspberry Pi glasses that auto-translate signs to letters.
- The glasses scan hand shapes, identify letters, and convert to speech for easier communication.
- It’s limited to individual letters now, but there’s a potential for whole sign language dictionary translation in the future.
These days, it’s super easy to get started learning a language. If it’s not covered by Duolingo, there are plenty of apps and websites out there that can fill the gap. However, when was the last time you saw a language app teaching sign language? While the pickings are quite slim, this Raspberry Pi project is here to save the day by auto-translating what people are signing.
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The sign-language reading Raspberry Pi glasses
As spotted by Tom’s Hardwarethese Raspberry Pi glasses can translate what someone is saying in sign language. There are a few caveats; for example, right now, the project isn’t advanced enough to handle every single word in the sign language dictionary; instead, it can only translate individual letters. And, as you might expect, you and the signer have to face each other head-on for it to work. However, once you get over the hurdles, it’s an interesting piece of kit.
The glasses scan the environment and look for people performing sign language. When it detects someone, it scans the hand shape and deciphers which letter they’re signing. Once it has identified the sign, it then passes the letter to a text-to-speech program, which says the letter out loud for all to hear. It’s a shame that the glasses can’t handle anything past the alphabet, but hopefully, this is just the beginning of a much larger project that can translate the entire sign language dictionary on the fly.
If you want to make this yourself, head on over to Hackster where the creator has listed all the hardware, code, and instructions on putting it all together. And if you think this is all a bit too advanced for your skill level, you can cut your teeth on these Raspberry Pi projects for beginners.