City lad Vinay Kumar Kante, who has a penchant for building miniature electrical home appliances, has now come up with what he calls the cheapest hearing aid machine.
Using a microphone, an amplifying transistor, a battery and a speaker that are commonly available in the market, Mr. Vinay Kumar, an engineering graduate in Electronics and Communications Engineering from NRI Institute of Technology, said he built the device for less than ₹100.
Mr. Vinay Kumar has earlier built a miniature refrigerator when he was in Intermediate and later set a record by building an iron press and mixer grinder that have a dimension of no more than a few centimetres. His accomplishments found him a place in the Telugu Book of Records and India Book of Records, he said.
Driven by a cause
“My father was suffering from a hearing problem and we could not afford the hearing aid devices that were available in the market. So I decided to build one by myself and collected the required components and made one that cost me less than a thousand rupees. Further, after coming across people who couldn’t afford even a few hundred rupees for such a device, I built a simpler machine on a small circuit board,” Mr. Vinay Kumar said about his device. He is currently preparing documentation to apply for a patent for the device.
Mr. Vinay Kumar is looking for opportunities to pursue higher education in material science and nanotechnology in top universities abroad.
