International Journal of Innovative Technology and Exploring Engineering (IJITEE) ISSN: 2278-3075, Volume-8, Issue-11S2, September 2019 395 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication Retrieval Number: K106309811S219/2019©BEIESP DOI: 10.35940/ijitee.K1063.09811S219 An Architecture Improvement of Electronic Braille Quran Based on Raspberry Pi Ahmad Syahrin Bin Shahriman, Shaharil bin Mad Saad, Zair Asrar Bin Ahmad, Mohamed Bin Hussein, Mohd Azuwan Bin Mat Dzahir, Mohd Azwarie Bin Mat Dzahir ฀ Abstract: An electronic braille (eBraille) Quran is a braille display that is use to aid the visually impaired and blind Muslims in their journey of understanding and appreciating the Quran in a much more convenient way. It is an invention of University of Technology Malaysia (UTM) since 2009 for the blind people to recite Quran through the Braille system. However, current architecture of eBraille Quran comprises of too many modular components, numerous microcontrollers and complexly designed. Another vital issue is that its architecture still uses old technologies where the firmware updating or data correction process cannot be done remotely. This makes it hard to maintain, repair, costly and time consuming. This study proposed an enhancement of current architecture with the latest technology of single board computer named Raspberry Pi 3B+. The architecture is first designed according to the existing features of the eBraille Quran. Then, a prototype circuit is developed and fabricated for testing purposes of the proposed architecture. Once the circuit is fabricated, an experiment is conducted to test on how well the new architecture manages the intended functionalities, controlling input and output of braille cells, the performance of start-up time and battery consumption. The result shows that the proposed architecture using Raspberry Pi manages to carry out all the proposed functionalities of eBraille Quran. The start-up time is also within tolerable level with only 1 second slower than the current architecture. Battery consumption on the other hand shows that using Raspberry Pi reduces the battery consumption by 1.2% per hour. Keywords – Braille System, Raspberry Pi, Single-Board Computer, eBraille Al-Quran, Architecture. I. INTRODUCTION The blind or visually impaired people uses braille system to communicate and connect – without the need of their eyes. A braille system is a system of raised dots that could be read with the tip of our fingers. It is used by thousands of people world-wide in their own native languages and literacy. Through advancement of technology, the Braille system is used on refreshable devices, such as the eBraille Quran – an invention of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Revised Manuscript Received on August 05, 2019. Ahmad Syahrin Bin Shahriman, School of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor Bahru, Malaysia Shaharil bin Mad Saad, School of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor Bahru, Malaysia Zair Asrar Bin Ahmad, School of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor Bahru, Malaysia Mohamed Bin Hussein, School of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor Bahru, Malaysia Mohd Azuwan Bin Mat Dzahir, School of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor Bahru, Malaysia Mohd Azwarie Bin Mat Dzahir, Faculty of Built Environment & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor Bahru, Malaysia. (UTM) for blind and visually impaired people to recite Quran [1][2][3]. The eBraille Al-Quran, as seen in Figure 1 [4] , does not come without limitations that can be improved. Figure 1: eBraille Quran [4] The current eBraille Al-Quran comprised of too many modular components, numerous microcontrollers, extensive wiring and overall complexly designed. This makes it hard to maintain, repair, is costly and time-consuming. Another vital issue in the current architecture is that any form of firmware updating, or data correction process cannot be done remotely and had to be done manually via secure digital (SD) cards. Overall, the whole architecture can be simplified and upgraded further with the implementation of single board computer (SBC). II. LITERATURE REVIEW The Braille system is devised in 1824 by a Frenchmen, Louis Braille, a fifteen-year-old boy in Paris, France as a sixty-three-character code that indicates the different variations of characters or alphabets by using raised dots [5]. This idea was inspired to him by a former French artillery captain, Charles Barbier who went and visited his school. Charles had shared his invention called “night” writing which is a code comprised of 12 raised dots made for the army that allows for delivery of messages in the dark [6]. As technology progresses, Braille system is no longer used on paper and instead are used by means of electronic braille displays. Electronic braille displays are an array of braille cells which are made to be refreshable by using various actuators that drive the dots up or down [7][8][9]. This enables the visually impaired users to read a sequence of characters and even words with ease. It is also common for a braille display to be equipped with Perkin keys and text-to-speech output which grants the users extra accessibilities. One example of