Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks dang! I'm one of the makers and happy to chat!
Best use of time, money, and effort I’ve ever seen. Congrats on winning life.
Thank you!
Show HN: Homemade rocketship treehouse – hardware to custom OS
51–55 of 55 posts
Re: Show HN: Homemade rocketship treehouse – hardware to custom OS
#52I don't even have kids yet and I already feel bad for them! On a more serious note, what an incredible project. There's all the very obvious stuff -- the creativity, the learning experience, the sense of wonder and ways it can inspire both the adults and kids -- but above all what sticks out to me is the amount of time that it took to put this together could have so easily... gone to waste? Like, what a nice way to h…
Thank you so much for these very kind words. One of my personal pet peeves is people who see a passion project that has no practical purpose and say "You obviously have way too much time on your hands." Your comment was the opposite so I particularly appreciate it!
Re: Show HN: Homemade rocketship treehouse – hardware to custom OS
#53Projects like this make life magic for little kids. I don't have the time/skill/patience for something of this scale, but I love doing little projects that make life magic for other people. So far I have created multiple kids gaming tables. I made a lego play table that had storage drawers underneath and stuck big baseboards on the top. I made quite a few kids playtables using model railroad stuff like grass mats, tr…
What a cool parent you are. I’m trying to do things like this with my toddlers and it’s exciting to see what others are doing. Things like what you described are my absolute favorite reason to write code.
Re: Show HN: Homemade rocketship treehouse – hardware to custom OS
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was a kid I loved even just watching pictures of complicated interfaces. That is why I made a tactile "busy box" for my nephew: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BGSkwGI6BI Just a lot of fun buttons "doing nothing" as you say. :D
This is a really nice one! What did you use for the board itself? Is it 3D printed?
Thank you! Yes, it is 3D printed. The box is made of 3 parts (front face, backplate, battery cover. It is held together with heat-set inserts. The "nuclear sign" is also 3d printed from two parts and then they are snapped/glued together.
Three things I learned from the play-test with the end user (my 1.5 year old nephew):
- The corners and edges are a bit sharpish. If I would do it again I would add more chamfer there. (No actual accidents though, other than that it tore the wrapping paper while in transit :))
- Having a bunch of different buttons was really good. Some were harder for him to actuate, but he kept playing with them for weeks (with interruptions of course), and eventually managed to activate all of them.
- The parents deemed the LEDs too bright and applied some tape to dim them. If I would do it again I would wire one of the many potentiometers to regulate the brightness.
Re: Show HN: Homemade rocketship treehouse – hardware to custom OS
#55All my life I wanted to fly like the birds that you see way up in the sky. Making circles in the morning sun flying high in the sky until the day is done.