More than 160 million people, nearly 3% of the world population, are blind or visually impaired. Many of them enjoy the same activities as sighted people. Baseball is no exception. There is so much interest, in fact, that the National Beep Baseball Association was formed in 1976. Unfortunately, the available equipment is currently unreliable, costly, and dangerous. This project seeks to vastly improve the "Beep Baseball" to increase the players’ enjoyment of America’s favorite pastime.

This semester, we will design a field programmable baseball that allows the testing of various sound patterns with a single ball. This will require redesigning the internal circuitry, optimizing size and improving functionality. Furthermore, user-friendly C code will be created for the selection and download of beeps to the balls internal PIC. Our end product will be the creation of two different Beep Baseballs: one with the optimal sound pattern ready for use and one programmable ball giving players an option of multiple sound patterns.