Green light, the app for the blind that translates the traffic lights

The project is led by three students from the Polytechnic University of Valencia

   Three students from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) have been the winners of the fifth edition of 'HackForGood' global with a first prize endowed with 6,000 euros thanks to its 'Green Light' project, a mobile application capable of "translating" the state of the traffic lights to help the blind.

Jorge Fabregat, Javier Ferrando and Joaquín Montesinos, students of Telecommunication Engineering and Electrical Engineering, have been the creators of the application 'Green Light', which combines the information of the City of Valencia on the location of the traffic lights and the GPS position of the user .

   "It is a mobile application that warns the blind pedestrian with a vibration or a beep if it can happen or not," Ferrando explained. To obtain the real-time status of the traffic lights, they resorted to an Arduino board, an open source, low cost, easy to use and very flexible microcontroller, designed for artists, designers, computer novices and anyone interested to create interactive objects or environments.

The 2017 edition has been the most crowded and has gathered 1,500 hackers from 23 Spanish universities, which have presented 150 different projects in 15 venues. The first national prize is endowed with 5,000 euros, to which are added another 1,000 euros that the UPV team obtained by staying in the first place of the local phase.

The three students met in the association 'Makers UPV', a community of university students who are "passionate about making things", and where they built 3D printers and drones.

At the moment, 'Green Light' has achieved up to three local awards ('Geo-Open Data VLC', 'Think Big' and first place at the Valéncia headquarters) and the absolute award in the global phase. In this way, the 'Think Big' category of Fundación Telefónica will allow them to continue working on the project.