Ever thought that your Sony PlayStation Portable could one day help blind people make their lives a little bit easier? If you're wondering how that can be, Sony PSP homebrew developer Pegasus2000 dropped by the QJ.NET Forums earlier to share some answers.

Pegasus2000 is currently working on a Sony PSP homebrew application called Blind Assistant. It's still in the very early stages of development, but Pegasus2000 wants to prove that this one's a legitimate effort and has released Blind Assistant v0.1 to give everyone a feel of things to come.

According to Pegasus2000, Blind Assistant can help the visually-challenged recognize people in the same room as they are. In future versions, features such as collision avoidance may very well be added.

If you want to try the program, Blind Assistant  version 0.1 is available for download from the link below. However, it doesn't work by itself at this point, so you'll have to download a program called Eyeserver via this link to make it work with a PC. Pegasus2000 reminds everyone not to expect too much at this point because this version of Blind Assistant has been released only to prove that the project is real.

In Pegasus2000's words, here's how to test Blind Assistant version 0.1:

• Install Eyeserver on PC with a webcam (this is a temporary solution, we are working on GoCam support for PSP), and copy the driver. ndUsbDriver.Prx on your memory stick.
  
• After, copy the directory BLINDASSISTANT that is in the zip Blind Assistant-POC01.zip in the root folder of the memory stick. Install also the application (EBOOT.PBP) in your PSP.
  
• After, run Eyeserver on PC, connect a webcam to the PC and connect the PSP to a second USB port.
• Start Blind Assistant. The BA-core will reconfigure automatically your memory stick. If it says that it is unable to connect with the camera, you can try to detach and after attach the PSP USB connect to PC, and after you can choose Retry in the error wizard.
• If it is all ok, you could see your image on the screen of PSP. Choose a slot. It will appear a wizard that will guide you in the training of the system. Blind Assistant needs 4 faces for person to do a good analysis of the features of a face.
• Try to do training with two people of your family: when you complete, Nanodesktop will generate the new vocal samples and it will register them on your memory stick. After, you'll hear EAS (Envelope Audio Support) that executes these samples without using of CPU.
• The PSP could be able to recognize where the people that are subjects of the trainings are in the room and it could say where are.

• Remember that, if you stop the program and if you restart it, Nanodesktop will recall automatically all informations you have registered during the training phase.