Hard to believe an eight-year-old developed shades fitted with IR sensors right? Report says he did

Chennai: A report in the news agency PTI on school students inventing cool gadgets for these coronavirus times, quotes an eight-year-old who allegedly developed sunglasses that have an infrared sensors that help the wearer maintain physical distance.

The student Vinayak Tara, who studies in class 4 in from Haryana’s Ambala, a class 8 student, is said to have been inspired by a robotics class at their school, which has not been named.

“These sunglasses are integrated with IR sensors in which a code is set for a particular distance. IR detectors are little microchips with a photocell that are tuned to react to infrared light,” the big words coming out of an eight-year-old boy are quoted by the report. “If someone comes closer than one metre (to the wearer). the sunglasses will start beeping. It can also be modified to play music or a voice message like ‘please maintain some distance,” the boy allegedly went on to say.

This doesn’t seem like just another precocious child. Unfortunately the report does not give any more detail about this veritable genius.

And apparently the trait runs in the family. His older brother Kartik Tara together with Vinayak, is said to have developed a ventilator of sorts.

“We have created a wooden structure in which the ball is fixed between two walls. When pushed, the ball gets pumped,” Kartik said. “The whole structure is fixed with a motor that moves automatically with the time set, which is required to pump that ball, and this whole circuit is programmed in a way that it works automatically,” the class 8 student was quoted as saying, sounding like an experienced scientist.

“This ventilator is connected to a circuit and interfaced with a mobile app so that patients’ health can be monitored through the mobile app,” he added.

The protoype has been tested in the city hospital and the brothers are seeking suggestions from medical experts to make the prototype commercially viable, they said.

Another such student tech whiz featured in the PTI report is Sarthak Jain, a class 11 student of Modern Public School in Delhi’s Shalimar Bagh. He developed Arduino — an automated touchless doorbell with ultrasonic sensors to ensure the visitor does not have to touch the bell. This minimises the chance of catching the coronavirus.

“As doorbell is a medium of transferring virus it is used maximum times in our daily routine and hence the chances of spreading the virus increases,” he said.

“So, using Arduino, an open-source electronic prototyping platform, I have developed a doorbell with sensors that can detect the presence of a person or object within a distance of 30 to 50 cm and produce a beep sound from the buzzer without the person having to ring the bell,” the boy added.

Shivam Mukherjee, a class 9 student of Amity International School here, invented a sanitisation band called ‘Abhay’.

“It is a simple band that can be worn around the wrist. Equipped with an inbuilt proximity sensor and UV light, it can sense when the user’s hand is near an object and automatically disinfects the object via UV light and alcohol-based spray,” he said.

“The band is computer-controlled and can be operated via an app. Furthermore, it is refillable. When the spray is nearing empty, a reminder is sent on your mobile... I have named it Abhay which means fearless” Mukherjee said.