Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids

blog.smartere.dk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 422 posts

Re: Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids

#331

Post by IshKebab »

sleekest wrote: post #282
IshKebab wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the same before we actually got a Yoto. This is one of those "I could easily DIY that" things that you really couldn't.

I have a DIY one, which took two evenings, but it's limitation is that it isn't portable. I expect there are big benefits to portability, but I'm okay with not having them. Is there anything else I'm missing?

Access to the audiobooks published for Yoto. Yoto daily (daily podcast for kids that my kids absolutely love). A button that plays relaxing music to help them go to sleep. The display (they love this a surprising amount). General polish (I imagine it's pretty janky if it took 2 evenings).

Re: Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids

#332

Post by schnatterer »

palmotea wrote: post #32

There are some off-the-shelf products that work similarly in the audio space: https://us.yotoplay.com/ https://us.tonies.com/ I had plans to build something that for the TV, but having kids means I never had the time. And honestly, that might not have been such a bad thing since it made setting limits easier. I was able to teach my kid to turn the TV off when she was fairly young (and pause more recently), which seem…

The toni boxes are also quite hackable https://tonies-wiki.revvox.de/

At least the older model. Don't know about their latest model with gaming and everything.

Re: Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids

#334

Post by spockz »

llimllib wrote: post #142
al_borland wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m using an AppleTV HD with Peacock and it’s pretty bad. I wouldn’t consider NBC a niche service. After an episode ends, I need to wait for the new one to start to be sure it marks the last one as watched. When going back to the main screen, it can take upwards of 30 seconds, maybe more (it feels like an eternity), for the “watch next” to update. If I don’t wait for it to update, it will start playing an old episode…

Yes I think the device itself is fine, but the Apple TV apps are mostly terrible and often very laggy/poorly written. The way developers use the UI toolkit that the Apple TV provides also seems to tend towards apps where it's very difficult to figure out what's the active selection, which is of course _the_ critical challenge.

I have never noticed this issue. Buttons get highlighted in contrasting colours. Things like episode thumbnails get a different colour highlight border and sometimes even drop shadow. What I find harder to do is to see when going to the left means going to the menu on that side or just the previous tile.

Re: Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids

#335

Post by cirelli94 »

palmotea wrote: post #32

There are some off-the-shelf products that work similarly in the audio space: https://us.yotoplay.com/ https://us.tonies.com/ I had plans to build something that for the TV, but having kids means I never had the time. And honestly, that might not have been such a bad thing since it made setting limits easier. I was able to teach my kid to turn the TV off when she was fairly young (and pause more recently), which seem…

A friend of mine built an open-source version of this! Check it out at https://github.com/tommyblue/favolotto

Re: Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids

#336

Post by johnisgood »

tantalor wrote: post #24
tete wrote: post #3

> Modern TVs are very poorly suited for kids. They require using complicated remotes or mobile phones, and navigating apps that continually try to lure you into watching something else than you intended to. I'd argue that's not too different for grown-ups. ;)

My biggest gripe is how terribly slow it is to navigate UI on a TV. The latency between user input and the UI responding can be upwards of 10-20 seconds. Just incredibly user hostile.

Modern TV, yeah. TVs from 15 years ago were waaaay faster than smart TVs. Ridiculous.

Re: Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids

#337

Post by johnisgood »

ori_b wrote: post #134
akagr wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Sony TV has android and is fairly responsive. Maybe a second lag, but definitely not 10-20 secs. I do need to give it time to “warm up” when I start it, though. I use it so rarely it’s generally turned off from wall outlet. I still prefer Apple TV for various reasons, though, responsiveness being one of them.

Maybe a second lag Even a second lag is insane. I don't understand how people tolerate that.

They do not know any better, I suppose. Reading these threads just makes me wonder: if you guys have so many problems, why do you not torrent?

Re: Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids

#338

Post by larschdk »

elzbardico wrote: post #91

Floppy disks are getting hard to come by, and will soon be too expensive. A good option would be to have the same data printed as QR codes in labels glued to small domino sized wood blocks that could be inserted in a slot in a box and read by a cheap camera module.

An 125 kHz RFID reader would be a way simpler and cheaper solution. Could still have a 3D-printed box/slot.

Re: Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids

#340

Post by stbtrax »

arscan wrote: post #44
palmotea wrote: post #32

There are some off-the-shelf products that work similarly in the audio space: https://us.yotoplay.com/ https://us.tonies.com/ I had plans to build something that for the TV, but having kids means I never had the time. And honestly, that might not have been such a bad thing since it made setting limits easier. I was able to teach my kid to turn the TV off when she was fairly young (and pause more recently), which seem…

We have a yoto for our son, and its a great experience, but be prepared for pricing of content to match what we used to page for cds/tapes. e.g., the pout-pout fish card is $8 USD for 10 minutes of content [1]. I think that's ok, as he actually would get a lot more than 10 minutes of use out of it, and its great to pay the creators while not having to worry about ads manipulating my kid. But it highlights how expecta…

Haha, as a tangent: I don't get the endurance of the pout pout fish book. It teaches a terrible lesson. It bizarrely mishandles both consent and depression. Similarly bad: the rainbow fish.
Post reply on HN