The Mover Kit: Coding wearables for kids

Article By : Max Maxfield

Here's an ideal toy to get kids up and moving and doing "stuff". It's also a wearable that's designed to take full advantage of their imaginations.

I find it strange (verging on suspicious) how synchronicity seems to pop up all over the place in my life these days. Just about a month ago, for example, my wife (Gina the Gorgeous) and I were chatting about how we used to spend so much time playing outside when we were kids — running around, riding our bikes, climbing trees, falling out of trees — and how we worry that the youngsters of today are spending too much time indoors "socializing" in the form of text messaging and playing online games.

And then, the next day, I heard about a couple called Daniel and Bethany who are the founders of Technology Will Save Us (TechWillSaveUs.com). The reason I mention this here is that Daniel and Bethany have a very interesting Mover Kit Kickstarter Project, which has well-exceeded it's $50,000 goal.

All I can say is that I think the Mover Kit is a brilliant idea. It includes a round circuit board, rechargeable battery, case, lanyard, and wrist snap-band. The board features eight tri-colored LEDs, a pushbutton switch, a motion sensor (accelerometer) and a compass (magnetometer). It works out of the box — after the kid has "built it" (clipped it all together) — but kids can also use the supplied USB-micro cable to connect the device up to a host computer to create their own games.

In this example, we see that "When the wearer jumps" causes the Mover Kit to "Play/Display the rainbow pattern." This really is a wearable that is designed to take full advantage of kids' imaginations. Take a look at this videoand this video to get a better idea as to what this is all about and what the Mover Kit is capable of.

The main thing for me is that this is an ideal toy to get kids up and moving and doing "stuff." I also think it can be used to make a lot of tasks fun, like the "cleaning the teeth" segment shown in one of the videos. As always, I am in awe of folks like Daniel and Bethany who come up with stuff like this, and I think they are "onto a winner" with their Mover Kit. What say you?

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