Invention to bring Twitter to the blind?

A student from Queen's University has come up with an ingenious way to keep track of your Twitter account – through the radio.

Mark McKeague, a 20-year-old student originally from Culduff in County Donegal, has managed to route his Twitter page through a radio, so that people can tune into his computerised messages.

The invention could bring new followers to Twitter, and may be of special use to the blind or partially sighted.

Tune in, tweet out

Speaking to the BBC about his invention, McKeague said: "I took the radio apart and added an Arduino micro-controller to pick up movement on the tuning dial of the radio.

"I also added a connection to the radio's speaker. This allowed me to connect the radio to the computer.

"I could then download tweets and send them to the radio which means the users can tune into spoken tweets."

No plans

Despite the possibilities of bringing the 'Twitter radio' to market, McKeague is happy for his product to stay as a prototype for the time being: "I don't have any plans to commercialise yet, as the radio is still very young in terms of its conception and design and at the moment is set up as an installation piece," Mark told the BBc.

"I'm continuing work in this area of interaction design in my portfolio module this semester, and would be interested in developing the radio further."

Via BBC