While it is true that there are already many devices that facilitate communication with their families to all those older people who do not handle technology well, you can always take a spin on the subject and create something even simpler. This is how Yayagram was born, a box with a Raspberry Pi with which grandparents can easily communicate.
Yayagram: Raspberry Pi and Telegram as a form of contact
Sending a message through WhatsApp or any other messaging application is something that most of us do repeatedly at the end of the day. And be careful, not only text messages, but also images, audios, etc.
The use of technology and all these applications and services has become so common that it is even hard to imagine that there are still people who today do not know how to handle them. Even more so if one takes into account that there are even mobile phone manufacturers that have adapted the interface of their devices to make them much simpler still, with huge numbers, quick access to the contact book, etc.
However, there are people whose technological prowess will never be enough to open an application like Telegram and send a message to a relative to ask how they are or simply tell them that they are fine, that there is nothing to worry about. So for that type of user there is Yayagram.
This communicator created by Manuel Lucio is designed to meet a very specific need and do it in the simplest way possible: allow an elderly person to communicate with others through Telegram. But why Telegram and not WhatsApp, which seems to be the application par excellence among millions of users. Well simply for a matter of implementation.
How Yayagram works
The operation of this Yayagram is quite simple . By the way, in case you wonder, it has this name because Manuel only has a grandmother (yaya) and no grandfather (yayo).
The basis of the device like many others is the Raspberry Pi. This board will be in charge of executing all the necessary software, connecting to the internet and executing the different libraries that together with the use of Python as a programming language allows:
- That the person who wants to communicate with others do so using a microphone to send a voice message
- That when a new message is received from one of your contacts, it is printed using a thermal printer. So you can read the messages on paper whenever you want without having to interact with any type of graphical interface
To further facilitate the use of this communicator, the device has seven audio connectors that in turn are associated with a specific contact plus a connector that allows the mass sending of the voice message to the seven previous contacts. Thus, depending on whether you want to talk to just one person or to all of them, all you have to do is plug the cable into the corresponding connector as in those first telephone switchboards. Yes, the ones you have been able to see in series like Cable Girls.
Once the cable that serves as a metaphor for the connection between two people is connected, you only have to press the red button to start recording the audio through a USB microphone placed in the box itself. All in a very simple way for anyone regardless of their technological level.
More uses for the Raspberry Pi
As you told the creator of this Yayagram through a thread, creating one is not excessively complex if you have basic knowledge and the ability to follow the instructions that you can find on the internet about how to make use of the different libraries or the connection of the necessary components.
Hello world, I present to you the Yayagram! A device that helps the elderly to communicate with their granddaughters and grandchildren. How? I open the thread with the details of the pot! pic.twitter.com/qR4zA6iq4c
– Manu (@mrcatacroquer) April 18, 2021
Likewise, although many of us do not have the need to have such a device for communication with family and friends, the good thing is that it also gives ideas of other uses that could be made of this product . For example, so that a store or restaurant could have paper orders that its users made through messaging applications. Here it already depends on the imagination of each one.