An incredible amount of effort was made to avoid spending quality time with their children. Is this something to celebrate?
An NFC movie library for my kids
281–290 of 337 posts
Re: An NFC movie library for my kids
#282I love this and I've thought about making something similar just for myself, because I miss fucking around with DVD cases, but I also don't want to own a large library of DVDs and blurays that takes up too much space.
I need to do this finally.
Re: An NFC movie library for my kids
#283Loved reading that and realising that the author has hit on something. I do wonder though, who was looking after the house and kids whilst the author spent all the time researching and building!
Imagine the benefit to the child if their parent was sitting next to them reading, or building something together out of blocks
Re: An NFC movie library for my kids
#284This is fun, but wouldn't some second hand Blu Rays have been simpler?
Do you have children aged 0-4? My daughter had a CD player before we got the kids a Yoto each, and she and her little brother scratched the heck out of the CDs, not intentionally, but you just can't expect a child that age to handle them carefully enough not to scratch them. I know Blu-Rays can take a bit more than a CD, but even they won't stand up to a 2yo.
If you teach your children to treat everything gently from birth, they won’t even know how to abuse things. They’ve never learned it.
Re: An NFC movie library for my kids
#285Awesome. Reminded me of Yoto, an internet radio style thing for kids that uses little NFC cards. https://us.yotoplay.com/ Techmoan reviewed it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mQECKOkkqk Less directly was Tonies, an audio player for kids that uses NFC on Skyrim style figures to trigger stories. https://us.tonies.com/ Techmoan did a video on that too (it’s how I know about both): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=…
Also a big fan of the Yoto player, it's helped our daughter stay in her room at bedtime.
For tinkering, there's an unofficial API (WIP)[0] to interact with the player, integration with Home Assistant[1], and Yoto's sample app[2].
[0]: https://github.com/cdnninja/yoto_api
Re: An NFC movie library for my kids
#286I have an extremely similar setup for my 3yr old. He has his NFC cards and select from stuff we find suitable. The TV comes on, one episode runs, TV goes off. He's not fighting over the remote and he has agency. And he's certainly not stumbling his way through YouTube on a tablet. No ads. Very nice for him. It's not yet necessary to track his usage. But I'm well prepared for it. Home Assistant works very well for the…
Is there a product opportunity here? What are the risks?
Re: An NFC movie library for my kids
#287Amazing write up and work in general putting this together - this is such an ideal form of the word "hack" in its incredibly low cost, durability, and usefulness. I was staggered when I saw your build cost list - I know ESPs are in the realm of "Cheap AF" but all of those NFC cards also for $9?! This is one of the few reasons I would shop Alibaba! We're talking around $15 total for the full NFC setup if you can print…
The author himself pointed out in the end of the article that blurays are cheap- in my view they provide a close enough physical experience. I would probably stick with Blu-ray approach?
You don’t have kids do you?
They leave the last disc laying on the TV cabinet. It never, ever goes back in the box. I found three stacked at one point, and I think one disc just outright disappeared and we had to get a new one. It wasn’t until the discs started skipping that the kids even thought about taking care of them.
Re: An NFC movie library for my kids
#288I have an extremely similar setup for my 3yr old. He has his NFC cards and select from stuff we find suitable. The TV comes on, one episode runs, TV goes off. He's not fighting over the remote and he has agency. And he's certainly not stumbling his way through YouTube on a tablet. No ads. Very nice for him. It's not yet necessary to track his usage. But I'm well prepared for it. Home Assistant works very well for the…
Is there a product opportunity here? What are the risks?
Licensing.
Re: An NFC movie library for my kids
#289This is lovely. This feels like a new genre of hardware hacking to me, where someone is motivated to make a device out of compassion for their family or others. It reminds me of this instance where someone designed their own peristaltic pump to ensure their grandfather can eat: https://hackaday.com/2015/11/10/3d-printed-peristalic-pump-h... I seem to recall another similar device to this posted on HN also, but with a…
> (Clearly the next iteration of the OP's design needs a motorised NFC card loader, ATM-style. ;)) Author here. TOTALLY!!
No!
Look instead to Skylanders. You need to make a 3d printed avatar for each movie with an NFC antenna in the base.
Re: An NFC movie library for my kids
#290We realised that even a lot less cool than nfc, just put an inexpensive blueray reader + disc movies next to the tv and no internet connection was the best option for us.
Disc movies get trashed by children young enough for an NFC system to be appropriate.