[HN Gopher] An NFC movie library for my kids
___________________________________________________________________
An NFC movie library for my kids
Author : kzrdude
Score : 1270 points
Date : 2024-09-08 09:06 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (simplyexplained.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (simplyexplained.com)
| gus_massa wrote:
| I have two small kids and this project looks amazing!
|
| Anyway, I have to ask: Is it possible to make a similar project
| for Netflix and/or YouTube?
| Belphemur wrote:
| From the article
|
| The Apple TV also supports deep links for other services. Here
| are examples for the biggest streaming services:
| Netflix (use the regular URL):
| https://www.netflix.com/title/80234304 Disney+ (use
| regular URL):
| https://www.disneyplus.com/movies/coco/db9orsI5O4gC
| YouTube (use the regular URL with https:// replaced by
| youtube://) Single video:
| youtube://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah3ezprtgmc
| Playlist: youtube://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v=FkUn86bH34M&list=
| PLzvRQMJ9HDiQF_5bEErheiAawrJ-2zQoI&pp=iAQB
|
| The only problem with these services is that they will require
| you to select a profile before the movie/show will start
| playing. With Plex, you can enable "auto login", but I haven't
| tried it for the other services.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| And then the issue of when the streaming service removes the
| choice; the card become obsolete.
|
| Not that bad of a ordeal though.
| harshaxnim wrote:
| With only a little bit of effort you can prevent them from
| becoming obsolete. Most straightforward way is to just
| reprogram the nfc chip. Alternatively, Just add a
| redirector, one that maps show names/ids to the urls.
| Aditya_Garg wrote:
| That's the easy part
|
| The annoying part is reprinting the sticker and attaching
| it to the card
| aembleton wrote:
| Easier to download the shows and save to your plex
| server. Then it'll work even if your Internet connection
| stops working.
| alias_neo wrote:
| Just peel off the vinyl printed sticker you attached (See
| OPs updated cards), and reprogram the card.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Heck, even as an adult I would enjoy something like this. I love
| the idea.
| xafke wrote:
| OP here.
|
| Same here! I have debated making something similar for my
| personal music collection. I used to meticulously organize my
| albums in iTunes and listen to them in full. Somehow I stopped
| doing that with Spotify. The magic of the album is gone for me.
| illwrks wrote:
| This is great, I looked into doing something similar when my
| daughter was little. I didn't get very far and she learned how to
| use the remote control pretty quickly. I honestly think it was
| better for her to do it the 'old' way as she's pretty digitally
| savvy (for her age) than I would have expected.
|
| I remember when I was little I figured out how to use the VHS to
| set timers record shows etc, I think making things difficult is
| useful, it forces some learning to get a 'reward'.
| sfRattan wrote:
| > I think making things difficult is useful, it forces some
| learning to get a 'reward'.
|
| I found the same growing up. But at the time (the 90s) there
| weren't _hyperstimuli_ available in the form of smartphones,
| streaming services, or engagement-optimized algorithmic content
| feeds. The broadcast television that was available was often
| boring, or at least poorly matched to any given person 's
| interests at a given time. We didn't have a game console at
| home either, so getting a game to work meant installing it on
| the family computer, and maybe troubleshooting problems myself.
|
| I don't know that I'd have learned as much as I did about
| computers at that age if such hyper-optimized things had been
| available to me as a kid. And I think their availability today
| proves that any notion of "digital natives" was a fallacy. The
| generation below me (Gen-Z, Zoomers?) seem to be experts at
| using touchscreen devices and social networks. Some of them are
| even flocking to text based AI games that seem intriguing. But
| they see computers largely as fixed appliances, and most give
| up pretty quickly when a computer malfunctions (whether it
| comes in the form of a phone, laptop, tablet, television, or
| something else).
|
| I now deliberately work to banish (and keep banished) as much
| of that algorithmically optimized hyperreality as possible out
| of my home and life. I feel much better without it, and always
| have. But I also think it's a good practice to get used to so
| that, if I ever have kids, it'll be the norm I pass on to their
| daily lives. _Your first computer should require some assembly
| and tinkering, and digital activities which are really just
| skinner boxes created as lures by some or other corporation
| shouldn 't be available to compete with more difficult, more
| rewarding pursuits_.
| lolinder wrote:
| > The generation below me (Gen-Z, Zoomers?) seem to be
| experts at using touchscreen devices and social networks.
|
| And, importantly, it's not that they learned the new tech
| fluently while millennials haven't adapted--there aren't
| "modern" digital skills that aren't readily learned by
| millennials, but there certainly are fewer Gen Z adults who
| have learned to fluently use the still-more-powerful
| keyboard-based tech that we picked up as kids.
| illwrks wrote:
| I remember as a child being interested in computers. I had
| watched hackers, the Matrix etc and was just drawn to that
| world. And of course the people I hung around with too were
| like minded.
|
| As an adult I find it strange how nontechnical so many
| people are. I really am concerned for them in the future as
| AI and scams get so much better and much more complex.
| sfRattan wrote:
| > ...it's not that they learned the new tech fluently while
| millennials haven't adapted--there aren't "modern" digital
| skills that aren't readily learned by millennials, but
| there certainly are fewer Gen Z adults who have learned to
| fluently use the still-more-powerful keyboard-based tech
| that we picked up as kids.
|
| I agree, but it's _so much more than keyboards_.
|
| Things that irritated me for years about smartphones were
| irritations because I'd been able to do them on desktops
| and laptops but suddenly couldn't on a smartphone. I knew
| that the hardware qualified it as a general purpose
| computer, and that it was locked down into being a more
| limited appliance. Features were added back over the years,
| and there's even an argument that we normalized much better
| security practices on both iOS and Android/AOSP because of
| that development cadence but, for most people whose first
| computer was a phone, _the concept of a general purpose
| computer is simply missing from their awareness and
| "computer" becomes merely a word meaning black-box, magical
| appliance_. And they don't discover what the appliance
| truly could be---its full potential---because it now works
| well enough for its specific purpose that they can leave
| the black box closed.
|
| It may be a historically inevitable closing of doors, in
| the same way that cars stopped being machines most people
| understood long before the advent of the microcomputer, but
| I feel a sense of loss for other people. My reading of
| human history is that when there's a rough technological
| parity (i.e. parity of understanding, access, and
| usefulness) between individuals and large institutions, you
| tend to see more freedom. When there isn't, you see less-
| to-none.
| illwrks wrote:
| I unplugged the Alexa for about 6 months, that was a good
| reset, and we have a few tablets etc but no nonsense apps
| installed.
|
| Although time is ticking and I be we'll soon have the
| influence from 'peer pressure' - we're getting our daughter
| prepped for secondary/high school next year so she's got an
| old iPhone to play around with but thankfully she has zero
| interest in tech as a distraction. She sends a message to her
| friends every now and then, she watches some tutorials on
| Youtube for the piano, and of course some cat videos. My
| bigger worry is that she is going to bankrupt me from
| books... she's reading a new one every other week and has a
| real attachment to them so I can't persuade her to go to the
| local library...
| sfRattan wrote:
| My cousin has had success with Apple Watches for her middle
| school aged kids. The Watches now function independently
| from phones IIRC and allow her kids to be "reachable" in
| the way that is now socially expected/enforced, but the
| screen is so small and the selection of "apps" so limited
| that they don't disrupt daily life with addictive software.
| However, you have to be in the Apple walled garden for that
| to work.
|
| As for books, I've fallen in love with my Kobo Clara
| e-reader. It can run side-loaded software like Plato or
| KOReader, and I've loaded it with just about everything
| from https://standardebooks.org/. Maybe get your daughter
| an e-reader (Kobo or other model) for Christmas, paired
| with a monthly budget/stipend for books that she chooses
| how to spend?
| illwrks wrote:
| Great suggestions! Thank you!!
| progmetaldev wrote:
| An e-reader without a web browser, especially one in black
| and white, and a local library card can probably get her
| books loaned from the library without a large investment
| (and more importantly a device just for reading, rather
| than all the other distractions). The earlier Kindle, and
| whatever brand name Barnes & Noble e-readers have, would
| probably worth the investment compared to the cost of
| buying books regularly.
|
| At the same age, I read a ton, and I unfortunately got into
| fiction in the Dungeons & Dragons universe. Those books
| were WAY too overpriced, simply for using the D&D
| properties in their naming and stories. The books I felt
| were excellent, but the authors could have replaced names
| with something generic, and they would have been just as
| captivating. Having an e-reader would have made those costs
| far less painful, and I probably would have read at least
| twice as many books. I imagine if the books aren't highly
| trademarked or being made into movies, now you could
| probably get 3 times the number of e-books for the cost of
| a physical book.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| That attachment might be something to work on. I wouldn't
| mind stimulating my kid to build up their own library once
| they've reached the point of reading adult fiction and
| books can be reread by themselves after a few years, or
| enjoyed by others in the household. But at her age the
| library is perfect. Most of the books they read at that age
| are of transient value.
|
| Alternatively, take her to second hand book fairs and
| stimulate bargain book hunting in charity shops.
| nine_k wrote:
| I had a programmable calculator, a 8-bit computer (with few
| games but with built-in basic, assembly, and a debugger),
| then a PC, all before easy internet access. These were
| hyperstimuli all right.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > The generation below me (Gen-Z, Zoomers?) seem to be
| experts at using touchscreen devices and social networks.
|
| Pet theory: This perception is largely from their
| _confidence_ in messing around until something works, which
| has only a loose connection to the operator 's competence.
|
| Younger generations have grown up with devices that are (A)
| more idiot-proofed and (B) cheaper and easier to replace and
| (C) less supervision when using it. This leads to a different
| way of approaching the problem, which may be more-effective
| but isn't necessarily more-knowledgeable.
|
| In contrast, older generations who grew up with "never press
| these two buttons at the same time or it can explode" operate
| with an implicit assumption that those Kids These Days _must_
| know something their parents don 't in order to mess around
| so casually.
| achatham wrote:
| I built my kids "the box", which had a similar concept. It was
| an upholstered box with a frosted acrylic top and a camera
| mounted inside facing up. You would put cards on top of the box
| and it would recognize the symbols and take an action, like
| play a song or read a word. I used large printouts of Data
| Matrix, as I found that faster and most accurate to decode. The
| front (up-facing) side would have a colorful design.
|
| In the most advanced version I had it read letters to read a
| word aloud (eg, a spelling tool). All so I could reenact the
| scene from Sneakers where they rearrange Scrabble tiles from
| SETEC ASTRONOMY to TOO MANY SECRETS :)
| progmetaldev wrote:
| I agree, and ultimately think it's also learned behavior, and
| seeing those at home interested in technology and getting a
| deeper meaning about things.
|
| A lot of comments seem to think that millenials or younger
| don't have an interest in technology, but I think that's only
| because they see their older peers or family members perfectly
| fine with a dumbed down interface to get their needs taken care
| of.
|
| As a 45 year old, that got started with computers at 2 years
| old watching and playing around with games my dad would write
| on an Atari 800XE/XL system, my 13 year old son gets all of the
| touch interfaces, but also picked up a serious interest in tech
| from watching me. I didn't want to push him into software,
| wanting him to find his own way with his interests, but in the
| last year he has shown an interest in figuring out what is
| behind all those touch interfaces and websites that just do
| things "automatically."
|
| I had taking apart crystal radios and learning to put multiple
| viruses on the family computer to have them fight for the
| "ultimate" virus as my learning experience. I think curiosity
| is learned, and even encouraging things outside of technology
| can lead into technology or science/math/problem solving.
| Younger generations are just as hungry for knowledge, we just
| have hidden it away, and need to give them a peek behind the
| scenes.
| illwrks wrote:
| You're retelling of your Atari story has resurfaced memories
| of me fiddling with a Commodore 64 tape drive to make some
| game work :)
|
| After this post, perhaps tech for kids need to be difficult
| to encourage learning.
| cynod wrote:
| Ah, that is really cool! I love it.. adds the tactile element
| back to the experience.
|
| Reminds me of this Raspberry Pi + SONOS project from a few years
| back:
|
| https://www.hackster.io/mark-hank/sonos-spotify-vinyl-emulat...
|
| I actually set that system up and it was awesome! Really was cool
| and fun to have the little cards, look through them and then
| "tap" to start the album. Unfortunately I needed the Raspberry Pi
| for an emergency and then have never fot around to running again.
| I fear now, with all the SONOS fun (that has destroyed my 8
| speaker setup :'( ), it won't work any more.
| bentt wrote:
| Thanks for sharing that! I built something similar but I was
| talking directly to Spotify and outputting through the RasPi. I
| had no idea Sonos provided an http api. I thought they were
| locked down. Maybe worth another go!
| legendofbrando wrote:
| This is so cool!
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Cool use of NFC tags! I remember seeing a similar idea with album
| art covering the walls, and you could hold your phone up to read
| an NFC tag hidden on the back to stream that album on the stereo.
|
| Looking for link
|
| EDIT - not the one I remembered but here's one implementation
| https://andreasjr.com/blog/interactive-wall-of-album-art/
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| Love seeing fun ideas for NFCs, I went into a bit of a dive on
| NFC/RFID tech a while back after hearing about the game Dropmix
| (which used really cool tech I haven't seen anywhere else) and it
| feels like there could be so much room for fun tactile
| experiences with some of the protocols.
| joe8756438 wrote:
| This rules, high probability I attempt to replicate. I got my 3yo
| a yoto, which has a similar UX but all audio, highly recommend!
| masnick wrote:
| Seconded. The Yoto is great. It also supports arbitrary MP3
| assignment to their NFC cards. It's all proprietary but has
| been rock solid over multiple years.
| lobochrome wrote:
| Really cool.
|
| But why not just have them handle the blu rays directly? Unless -
| you ripped them to your Plex and resold them...
| fragmede wrote:
| Because plastic disks attract scratches and kids can be rough
| with their toys.
| zer0zzz wrote:
| Then they will have learned a valuable lesson
| xandrius wrote:
| But that's how OP did it in their youth and they seemingly
| grow up well.
|
| It does seem that some parts of the story is missing. Maybe
| it's to safeguard the blurays or maybe they never existed in
| the first place?
| xafke wrote:
| OP here
|
| I do have all the Blurays. They're collecting dust in the
| garage ;)
|
| My kids are only 3 and 2. They would probably destroy the
| disks and the player in no-time. Also: I don't have a
| Bluray player connected to the TV (apart from the
| Playstation, which I definitely don't want them to fiddle
| with yet). I use an old computer to rip the discs.
|
| I might let them use the discs when they're a bit older.
| agile-gift0262 wrote:
| Or you store them away because once you've ripped them, you no
| longer need access to the physical item. So there's no point on
| having them using up the valuable space of the living room.
| xafke wrote:
| OP here.
|
| Fair question! I have all the disks. They're in the garage
| gathering dust.
|
| My kids are 3 and 2, so letting them handle the disks isn't a
| great idea right now. Might do that one day though!
| lobochrome wrote:
| Mine are 3 an 0. The three year old handles them fine - but
| kids are different;)
| jijji wrote:
| I like the idea of restricting the time time frame duration of
| watching movies. I would suggest adding a electric zapper to the
| couch that when they try to watch movies past a certain time they
| get zapped at a certain voltage eliciting a negative response.
| didgeoridoo wrote:
| Do you have boys? I guarantee you all mine would do is run out
| the clock and then he and his friend would try to push each
| other's faces into the electrodes.
|
| At least it's not screen time?
| cr125rider wrote:
| This is so cool. I've struggled with getting my media setup to
| work with any automations to call into the Roku and link to any
| app, let alone app content.
| navaed01 wrote:
| I love this! The constraints it applies to selection + the
| tangible interaction gives children a sense of definitive
| knowledge and expectation.l and agency. Which are very good for
| development. Congrats, I love it!
| zer0zzz wrote:
| Dang, the level of engineering to recreate what is essentially a
| VHS
| aembleton wrote:
| The electro mechanical engineering inside a VHS player is so
| much more impressive.
| sodality2 wrote:
| This is so cool! I do something similar for music - I have
| posters up for albums, and a small NFC tag is embedded behind the
| poster, so tapping my phone to the poster's corner and clicking
| the notification begins playing it immediately. I really want to
| make a collection of cassette-or-record-style plastic cards with
| album art and NFC tags, and hook it up to a speaker, so I can
| place my album on a pedestal and it starts playing immediately.
| SamBam wrote:
| What app do you have on your phone to do this?
| sodality2 wrote:
| I use "NFC Tools" to write the URL, which I copy the
| album/song URL from Spotify and embed it. When I hold my
| phone near it, the URL appears in the notifications, and
| clicking it opens it in Spotify, which then starts playing
| it. I have a bag of 100 tags I got from a friend so no
| shortage there.
| fragmede wrote:
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nfc-tools/id1252962749 is the
| one I use.
| sodality2 wrote:
| Yep, that's the one! Very simple to use
| hairywalt wrote:
| Love the simplicity of this. Out of interest, do you
| trigger just the web player or is there a URL pattern that
| can launch onto a specific device?
| sodality2 wrote:
| The regular https://open.spotify.com URL is registered to
| be handled by the Spotify app on iOS devices, so no
| bouncing from Safari - it opens straight away in Spotify.
| Nothing to play on a specific speaker, though - but my
| homepod mini is nearby so a tap to my poster then a tap
| to my speaker starts my listening session.
| hairywalt wrote:
| Makes sense, cheers. Might give it a go
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I have NFC Tools Pro from these guys,
| https://www.wakdev.com/en/ (but affiliated); I'm assuming
| you're referring to them. They're on Google Play store too.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Great idea. You could tag vinyl sleeves, too, so you could play
| from them as you look at them on the floor.
|
| It's digital-only but I have folders of records on my phone
| Home Screen. They're shortcuts that play the album, and the
| album art is the icon.
| zigman1 wrote:
| What a great idea! Thanks! it never occurred to me to do this
| jorgeyp wrote:
| I do the same for my CDs. I have them ripped on Plexamp and I
| place the NFC tags inside a corner of the booklet. So I tap the
| phone to the corner of a CD case instead. But my plan is to
| build a device like OP's so I don't even need the phone.
| showsover wrote:
| I'd love to do something similar for myself, but having never
| worked with NFC I see there are tons of different options.
| Would you mind mentioning what tags you got?
| sodality2 wrote:
| An Amazon search for "NFC 215 round cards" on Amazon should
| get you there! There's also stickers if you want something
| more permanent.
| kdamica wrote:
| I was just talking with my wife that that we wish there was a
| streaming service that made the choices more intentional and
| limited. Like for each show there should only be one episode
| available a day. This is definitely in the same spirit. Love the
| idea and implementation!
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| It is not as simple as some other service already set up but
| you might look into ErsatzTV which attempts to make streaming
| more like old school TV channels where you watch whatever is on
| at 8:30am instead of picking like at a buffet.
|
| So you could set it up so that Bluey is only on at 3pm for 30
| minutes a day, or whatever.
|
| I've thought about setting it up for my kids (and wife) but
| haven't done it yet.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| for anyone that's a retro gamer that plays roms / emulators etc..
| there's a great project with tons of great artists making prints
| called TapTo. Most of the setups are with a Mister FPGA setup,
| but it works with pretty much any setup with a bit of tweaks. I
| really dig the idea and may integrate one into an arcade cabinet
| in the office.
|
| https://github.com/TapToCommunity/tapto
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Kx3jwyk0U
| djabatt wrote:
| I absolutely love this project. Bravo.
| aanet wrote:
| This is such a fab project. <3 Cool electronics, simple workflow,
| 3D printing, and useful service! <3 <3 <3
| bluGill wrote:
| It looks cool but in my attempts to do this I've discokered it
| takes too much time I could spend with mx kids or catching up on
| sleep
| lxe wrote:
| Fantastic work!
| jdenning wrote:
| This is really awesome - just had my first kid, and I think I'll
| do something similar. Well done OP!
| xafke wrote:
| OP here.
|
| Thank you and congrats! Enjoy the ride!
| resonious wrote:
| Really awesome project. This bit made me think though:
|
| > First: you have a limited choice of movies to watch. When I was
| a kid, we didn't have an infinite catalog of movies to watch.
|
| Something always rubs me the wrong way with this way of thinking.
| "X is good because I had X when I was young." I don't necessarily
| disagree that X is good, but it's definitely not because you had
| it as a kid.
| MBCook wrote:
| It does help with decision paralysis, which can be especially
| hard for young kids. Not that it's easy as an adult.
|
| You could still have a giant library and rotate cards every
| week or something.
| resonious wrote:
| Yes, plenty of good reasons to like this project. I might buy
| something like it if it was off the shelf.
| nolan_wyss wrote:
| I personally would rather be interested in buying a "DIY
| kit" as a package and then build it myself as building it
| is the fun part (then the kids can use it) :)
|
| But I do see the potential for primary schools /
| kindergartens, retirement homes or any group where they
| occasionally have screen time. Makes choosing the next
| movie much more fun and no need to interact with a digital
| UI.
| agile-gift0262 wrote:
| I had the same reaction. There are many reasons why I also
| believe OP's solution is better than the usual having a kid use
| the remote to navigate Disney+.
|
| Having a curated selection instead of a near infinite catalog
| full of noise is one of them. Not exposing the kids to a UX
| optimised for retention (a.k.a. addiction) would be my main
| motivation though.
|
| Because I had that as a kid, would be at the bottom of the
| list.
| xafke wrote:
| OP here
|
| You make a good point. The "it was better in my day" argument
| isn't always valid. I didn't mean to imply that something is
| inherently good just because it existed in the past.
|
| But I do believe that having a smaller collection is nicer. It
| leads to a deeper appreciation for what you have. Each item in
| your library feels more special and valuable. And getting
| something new becomes exciting (I still remember getting a copy
| of The Lion King on VHS). This isn't something I get from
| browsing Netflix because new stuff is constantly being added.
|
| As a bonus, it also helps with decision paralysis, which young
| kids are more susceptible to. At least that's my experience.
| Give them lots of toys and they'll play with none. Keeping the
| toy selection limited and rotating them is better (at least for
| my kids).
|
| Thank you for letting me reflect on this! I will rephrase the
| post.
| hansoolo wrote:
| That was very well said! We have our own experience with too
| much toys and I don't like it.
|
| I really appreciate the effort you took for your kids here.
| Thanks for showing us!
| declan_roberts wrote:
| Brilliant idea! We do something similar for our "make your own"
| Yoto cards.
| MBCook wrote:
| Awesome.
|
| 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=P9RbMMJRxzw
| declan_roberts wrote:
| We love our Yoto!
| MBCook wrote:
| I have no use for one but after watching the video I kind of
| wanted one anyway.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| My wife actually liked them so much after buying them for
| our kids that she bought one to listen to music and
| podcasts around the house.
| zwirbl wrote:
| There is also this 37C3 Talk about Tonies
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNufX-tss5M
| namdnay wrote:
| there's a similar one in france: https://www.mybookinou.com ,
| they use it in nursery school
| nsteel wrote:
| There's also an RPI based version at
| https://github.com/MiczFlor/RPi-Jukebox-RFID
| marc136 wrote:
| Or one for arduino
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41500071
|
| Which was also forked for ESP32 and has its own community
| https://github.com/biologist79/ESPuino
| nsteel wrote:
| Cool, thanks. The nice thing about the Pi one is that it
| (used to, at least) support Spotify and various streaming
| services. After a quick look I can't see that feature on
| those microcontroller versions.
| cjrp wrote:
| Big fan of the Yoto! The fact you can easily record your own
| content (grandparents reading stories, etc.) is great.
| dustincoates wrote:
| Also a big fan of Yoto. Although, ironically, the greatest use
| for us is its use as a wakeup light it has around the base.
|
| My daughter knows that the Yoto is in charge of when she needs
| to stay in bed or when she can walk around. "When the light is
| red, stay in bed."
| alias_neo wrote:
| We tried that with our children but neither of them pay any
| attention, despite our best efforts.
| alias_neo wrote:
| My kids (2,4yo) have one each. They were recommended by a
| friend who has one for their child. Honestly one of the best
| pieces of tech I've used in a while.
|
| The app is thoughfully made with exactly the sort of features
| you'd want (alarms, separate volume limits for day/night, night
| light with changeable colours, morning alarm, bed/wake colours
| so the kids know when they should be asleep/awake; though my
| kids don't pay any attention to it, etc). Once you've scanned a
| card you own, you can activate it from your mobile app so when
| you're travelling you don't have to take all of the cards with
| you and risk losing them (though you do need to have WiFi for
| the Yoto to control it that way; I use my phone hotspot when
| we're places with no WiFi).
|
| They also have a couple of radio stations, fun educational one
| which is different every day, like a radio station, and a music
| one, which switches to bedtime music after bed time and plays
| curated bedtime lullabies and the sort of things you'd expect
| for sleep music for children.
|
| There's loads of educational cards (my 4yo loves the
| "adventures" series with "missy" where they explore different
| things about the world; under the sea, space, rainforests,
| etc), there's stories, and there's music, there's also a decent
| second-hand marketplace around here on Gumtree where people
| sell the cards their children have grown out of, though they do
| hold much of their value.
|
| The ability to record your own cards is also a huge win; they
| give you (I believe) 500MB of storage for each card you buy (at
| ~PS2 each), and you can record your own readings of things, or
| upload mp3s (we've made some Yoto music cards for CDs we own
| but they don't make cards for).
|
| We take them with us when we travel, but intend to buy the Yoto
| Minis which are much more portable for that purpose.
| marc136 wrote:
| If you are looking for a FOSS alternative to tonies, yoto and
| such I would also recommend the DIY TonUINO project.
|
| The boards are built into boxes, toys (from fire engines to
| plush) and whatever sparks imagination.
| https://discourse.voss.earth/t/tonuino-gehaeuse-galerie/786/...
|
| Most of the community speaks German, but there is also an
| English section https://discourse.voss.earth/c/international/11
|
| The source code is in English and the schematics language
| independent. https://github.com/tonuino/TonUINO-TNG
| hczedik wrote:
| There is also the similar Phoniebox community which is using
| Rasperry Pis: https://phoniebox.de/
|
| Here is my build that fits into a wooden police bus. The
| figures put on the driver seat start the music:
| https://github.com/Bronkoknorb/hermibox
| tapoxi wrote:
| My daughter (almost 2) loves her Yoto and brings it everywhere.
| The NFC card to play music means she can (and has) put peanut
| butter in the card slot and it doesn't matter.
| sphars wrote:
| 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
|
| [1]: https://github.com/cdnninja/yoto_ha
|
| [2]: https://github.com/yotoplay/yoto-sample-app
| fullstop wrote:
| > Less directly was Tonies, an audio player for kids that uses
| NFC on Skyrim style figures to trigger stories.
|
| My youngest, at 16, still loves the Tonie Box. She uploads
| random stuff to their web portal and plays it quietly at night.
| Her sister, in the top bunk, had a string / pulley connected to
| the figurine so that she could restart the music from her bed
| by lifting it just a little bit and putting it back down.
| hsmchoi wrote:
| I always think it's great to do projects for others! I enjoyed
| reading your review.
| hsmchoi wrote:
| Projects for others are always exciting and rewarding. Thank you
| for sharing your experience.
| Dig1t wrote:
| This is adorable and should be a commercial product.
| tzs wrote:
| The movies visible in the photos in the article, and their
| runtimes in minutes, are: 94 The Good Dinosaur
| 92 Trolls 98 Wall-E 88 The Lion King 103
| Moana 81 Toy Story 91 Trolls World Tour 95
| Inside Out 103 Frozen II 95 A Bug's Life
|
| > We have two boys, and the eldest is permitted a 30-minute TV
| session in the morning and another in the evening.
|
| So...if one of them wants to watch The Lion King or Toy Story
| they have to split it over at least 3 viewing sessions split over
| at least 2 days? And for anything else on that list they need to
| split it over at least 4 viewing sessions?
|
| That seems overly restrictive. Yes, limiting kid's TV time is
| probably a good idea, but would it really hurt to have some
| flexibility so that they can finish a movie in one session? Maybe
| let them bank sessions, so they can say skip morning TV for 3
| days, and apply that time to the 4th day's evening to get a slot
| for a whole movie.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Every parent is required to say they only allow very limited
| screen time even if secretly they all allow quite a bit more.
| xafke wrote:
| Lol, kind of true!
|
| We stick to the 2x30 minutes rule for 90% of the time but we
| do make occasional exceptions like when they're ill.
|
| Might change when they get older though.
| misnome wrote:
| Or we are ill!
| xafke wrote:
| Haha, can confirm!
| vitro wrote:
| Well, the nice thing about having borders is that you can
| allow those borders to disappear every now and then. Feels
| like something special for the kid!
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Plenty of parents do use screens responsibly. My five year
| old can watch one episode of whichever series he is watching
| at the moment after school (currently _Hilda_ , which Netflix
| really should push harder than some of the crap that gets
| suggested). In the weekends sometimes we allow for one film
| instead.
|
| It's not a challenge to keep a limit on screen time at this
| age.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > It's not a challenge to keep a limit on screen time at
| this age.
|
| Good for you.
|
| It is, however, a challenge for us.
|
| If all your friends have the same rules as you, then great.
| If all your friends have no rules at all, you are a tyrant,
| and your child will be at his friends places as much as
| possible.
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| FTA
|
| > Between certain hours, we allow them to watch TV. They can
| watch any movie they like. They can even switch between movies.
| But the timeframe is fixed. They can watch a good chunk of one
| movie, or they can watch a tiny bit of 10 different movies.
| It's completely up to them.
| fragmede wrote:
| Eh it'll probably be a reason for therapy when they're older,
| but the skill to say "okay, time for bed" and stop watching in
| the middle of something is an underrated skill.
| manmal wrote:
| IMO it's at least as important to be satisfied after one
| thing has ended, and not start the next thing.
| pests wrote:
| I'm in my 30s and I can't leave a movie unfinished. I'll
| either be up all night thinking about how it ends or never
| start it up again forever wondering.
| phito wrote:
| I have the opposite issue, I usually stop watching after
| 30mn and never return
| shannifin wrote:
| May depend on the kids' ages and what sort of viewer they are.
| As a young kid (like around age 6 and below) watching a movie
| episodically would've been fine for me. Time was different; I
| had no sense of a story arc spanning more than an hour.
| kmarc wrote:
| 1 hour of TV time PER DAY for small kids is considered
| restrictive?
|
| I would have thought it's much less. What would be an
| equivalent restriction on the phone/tablet/more actively
| engaging devices?
| sgt wrote:
| My 3 year old gets 15 minutes (!) max per day. Only on
| weekdays. Weekends no screens.
| sgu999 wrote:
| That's closer to how I'd like to handle it when my 3m old
| is old enough. But are you able to properly restrict your
| screen time as well? Seems complicated to tell a kid they
| can't do something their parents are doing multiple hours a
| day.
| sgt wrote:
| Yes, we don't tend to be on our phones near him. Not just
| to set a good example, but I've found that being glued to
| your phone isn't really a great thing anyway. For doing
| real work I sit in my home office with the door closed.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| We don't do this either (I hardly look at the thing at
| home), but just a look at the other parents bringing in
| their preschoolers at school is depressing. Half of them
| have their phone out, and the number of parents you see
| pushing a pram or stroller with a phone in front of them
| is absurd.
|
| We are a minority.
| sgt wrote:
| It is truly bizarre, I agree! Everything to chase a bit
| of dopamine.
|
| And if you peer over and look at what they're browsing,
| it's mostly junk, social media videos or just mindless
| scrolling.
|
| It's actually healthier for the brain to be bored in such
| moments.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Junk like hackernews?
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| HN is more than entertainment, though.
|
| It's apparently also a hangout spot for (self-awarded)
| gold star internet parents who love the smell of their
| own farts and think anyone else wants to smell them.
| eks391 wrote:
| My figurative farts aren't that cool but I do appreciate
| the inspiration I get from all y'all's gold-star farting
| tzs wrote:
| > 1 hour of TV time PER DAY for small kids is considered
| restrictive?
|
| In general, probably not. My point was that in the specific
| case of movies, where even movies designed for children
| usually run at least 80+ minutes, maybe an exception should
| be made so that the kid can watch the whole movie in one
| session if they want to and have the patience and attention
| span to do so.
|
| You can still limit the average to an hour a day. They just
| have to mix shorter content with movies to keep the average
| down.
|
| Breaking off movies after an hour is going to put the break
| around the act II low point in most children's movies. If the
| kid got invested in the characters and story that's a
| terrible place to make them stop until tomorrow.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| My 4 year old naturally does this anyway, and I can imagine
| many kids do.
|
| We don't have a set amount of allowed TV time for her, but she
| typically watches around 15-20 minutes of TV and then gets up
| and does something else.
|
| The only real rule we have around it is that TV (unlike music)
| is not a background sound. If you're done watching something,
| you have to turn it off, not just let it play forever.
| xafke wrote:
| Author here (surreal to see my post at the top of HN!)
|
| My kids are 3 and 2, and they don't watch TV like adults. They
| watch a bit of movie, get up, walk around, do something else,
| come back, and watch a bit of another movie or even switch to a
| TV show. It's weird!
|
| I like your idea about flexibility, but they're too young right
| now. Maybe we'll introduce your "bank" concept when they get
| older or increase the "TV budget". But for now we stick to 2x
| 30 minutes.
| oezi wrote:
| I have learned that doing just weekends for TV is much better
| for small kids so they don't get used to TV watching.
| dudul wrote:
| Even for not so small kids. With my 7 and 9 yo we do one
| ~30/40min session during the weekend, and a family movie on
| the 1st weekend of the month. No TV or screen time outside
| of these.
|
| I can't imagine having a 3yo watching TV 1 hour a day,
| especially the movies shown on this video.
|
| That being said, to focus on the technical project, that's
| very cool!
| Salgat wrote:
| We only do TV on the weekends (Miss Rachel mostly,
| sometimes a movie), but 1 hour a day seems like nothing
| considering they're in daycare learning and playing for
| 8+ hours among the many other things they're doing
| throughout the day. For me the issue is when it becomes a
| dependency for them.
| peterleiser wrote:
| Yes, we also switched to TV only on weekends.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| > [...] but they're too young right now.
|
| Indeed they are. I have a five year old who is now old enough
| to choose his own films and series from a selection curated
| by us. A system like this would be fine for children of his
| age.
|
| But 2 and 3? They are too young to choose their own media at
| all. Not because they can't, but because they can't judge the
| impact. For toddlers you really want to be the one in control
| about what they watch (and that horrible Bing can die in a
| tragic bunny bonfire).
|
| The Lion King, Wall-E? That's just overloading them at that
| age (and both are rated 6+ in the Netherlands). You can start
| with those at 5 or so depending on the child, or later if
| you've noticed them reacting too intensely to films rated 6+.
| For now? Stick with shorts suitable for their age, and move
| on to films (like Ghibli's Ponyo) at 4 or 5 as a special
| treat.
|
| Autonomy is all fine and well, but screens have an enormous
| impact on developing children. This is a really cool project,
| but you might want to reflect on how their brains are
| developing and what you as a parent can do to guide them.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Also, given that they understand Dutch, get them on to
| Buurman en Buurman! (The excellent stop motion Pat & Mat
| from Czechia). That's something which works well even at 3.
| tasuki wrote:
| Fun fact, the original has no dialogue. I think only the
| Dutch version is dubbed.
| nsteel wrote:
| Both The Lion King and Wall-E are rated universal in the
| UK.
|
| My point is that these things are subjective. I get this
| unsolicited advice is coming from a good place but it's
| just your random opinion. Let's leave the parenting up to
| the parent.
| sethammons wrote:
| Ain't overloading nothing. My favorite movie at 5 was
| Romancing the Stone. Anything non-age appropriate goes
| right over your head at that age. We are not talking scary
| nor violent. I liked the movie because of the crocodiles
| monkeydust wrote:
| > "It's weird"
|
| Not that weird I think... my 5 year old does exactly this. He
| cant sit through a full movie. My 7 year old also had that
| issue but now she can.
| mbs159 wrote:
| Totally normal for kids of such age. A 5-7 year old maybe
| could sit through a whole movie, but only if it would be
| engaging for him.
| sulandor wrote:
| we handle it similar; <30min/session, <1h/day, <2h/week
|
| there is a round robin process for who gets to pick from the
| catalogue and if there is no amicable consensus, we split or
| override.
|
| 30mins is about the attention span of a kid and you can see
| them get anxious and distracted after that, most of the time.
| HippocampusLabs wrote:
| Hahaha, this is awesome!
| djangelic wrote:
| This is incredible! I want to replicate this at home as well, but
| I would prefer to use QR codes since they also support URLs. Any
| reason why you went with NFC instead of QR code? I assume it's
| doable with a raspberry pi and webcam instead of tapping?
| Double_a_92 wrote:
| It's probably easier to embed an NFC tag in something child-
| friendly, compared to printing QR codes on something that small
| kids won't destroy.
|
| Also in this case (since it just laminated cards anyway) the
| usability is much easier. The kid just has to touch something.
| While with a QR it has to be positioned in a way that a camera
| can see and focus to it.
| xafke wrote:
| OP here
|
| I actually hadn't considered QR codes.
|
| To be honest, I had some NFC tags laying around and I was
| desperate to find a project for them ;)
|
| QR codes might be more complicated because you need a camera
| and a well-lit environment. NFC tags don't have that issue.
| djangelic wrote:
| My thought process was to laminate them to make them easier
| to make at home. I agree that it's definitely more child
| friendly. This maybe a project I attempt at home and will
| post if I'm successful.
| vitus wrote:
| I was surprised that you opted to use the tag ID as a primary
| key instead of writing the relevant metadata to the NFC tags
| in the first place. NTAG215s have about 500 bytes worth of
| rewritable storage, so you could even embed the full deep
| links if you so desired.
|
| https://www.shopnfc.com/en/content/6-nfc-tags-specs
|
| It also seems that ESPHome has support for reading / writing
| this arbitrary metadata, once you move to the PN532:
|
| https://esphome.io/components/binary_sensor/pn532.html#ndef
|
| (It's not clear that you can access the metadata with the
| RC522 through ESPHome, but the hardware should support it.)
|
| But hey, what you've got works.
| alias_neo wrote:
| Home Assistant scans the tag-IDs by default, so you use
| them as a trigger, with little extra effort for each new
| card. "When card with ID X is detected, do Y".
|
| I have something similar setup in my home office for my
| music and I just use the ID, no need to complicate it any
| more than it already is.
| croisillon wrote:
| i found the "thanks to Hans Wurst" part funny: it is a common way
| to stay anonym while inputting a real sounding name, like John
| Doe, but nobody really has this name
| RGamma wrote:
| It's also the name of one of those old "web fun communities",
| like CollegeHumor, and it's even still operational:
| https://www.hans-wurst.net/
| elthor89 wrote:
| Man, this is such a fun project. I understand where you are
| coming from. You can do this with music too. There a lot of
| children audio books or songs where you have the same "issue"
| that a parent has to operate YouTube or Spotify.
| interloxia wrote:
| Tonies are popular in my area. We use CDs. Both are available
| from our local library.
| agile-gift0262 wrote:
| This is great. And not just for kids. I think I'll copy the idea
| for my music and film collection. Picking up something and
| tapping somewhere feels like a nicer experience than navigating
| menus. I wish my e-reader had an NFC reader to do something
| similar with my books.
| dusted wrote:
| I did something similar for my granny back when she was alive but
| no longer able to operate her CD player.
| http://dusted.dk/pages/easyplayer/
|
| The fact that so many people come up with these kinds of
| solutions POST betamax begs questions. There seems to be some
| inherent unfairness in how unaccessible stuff is becoming.. It's
| interesting how we're trading the convenience (of signing up and
| paying montly for a dozen of rental services) for usability and
| tangibility..
|
| Late Gen X rant incoming: WHEN I WAS A KID.. When I was 3 years
| old, I could put on the music I wanted to listen to.. It was
| easy, take the tape out of the case, put it into my cassette
| radio (if it didn't fit, try flipping it), and press the
| triangle.. poof, music.. I didn't need to be able to read, there
| were pictures on the tapes, so I could still find my favourite
| tunes.. When we got our first video machine, a betamax, it was
| the same thing, just put the tape into the machine, press the
| triangle, poof, the movie I had chosen played on the TV..
|
| Then came DVDs, I was older then, so it was no problem for me,
| but, usability wise, DVDs were a step backwards.. You pop it in
| and press the tr.. No, you're met with unskippable copyright
| disclaimers and then presented with an animated menu, where you
| needed to be able to read to understand how to start the movie,
| suddenly, the movie itself contained (non standardized) ways of
| starting it, selecting chapters and such.. Sure, we traded the
| amazing ability to look at deleted scenes for the ability of of a
| small child to be able to start it.. but honestly, not even worth
| it..
|
| Skip to online streaming services and their crappy apps.. Jesus..
| Disney is how big of a company and their app is nearly unusable
| compared to a stack of VHS tapes..
|
| We're putting untold layers of unneeded complexity on EVERYTHING
| these days, and I'm not even sure we do it because we can, I'm
| afraid we're doing it because we don't know how not to..
|
| The early VCRs, cassette players and CD players were simple due
| to technological and economical constraints, but those
| constraints forced an extremely intuitive mode of operation which
| was transferable between similar devices.
|
| We're leaving a world polluted, drowned in untold complexity at
| all levels for our children, and honestly, we can't even navigate
| it very well ourselves, even if we have most of the story about
| how things got to be that way in the back of our heads. Stuff
| that we understand deeply already seems like complete magic to
| the younger generations.. We ought to do better, to builder
| simpler and more BASIC systems at every level, from instruction
| set architecture through to UI.. The fact people find it
| reasonable that you almost have to use a "tech stack" is
| abysmal.. There shouldn't HAVE to be really much of anything
| between your code and the metal it runs on.
|
| All that aside, this is a great idea! I'm going to do something
| simiar for my kid I think.
| grujicd wrote:
| Prints from inkjet printer look amazing. Do these printers still
| clog up when not used for a month or two?
| xafke wrote:
| Author here.
|
| I was quite surprised of the printing quality as well.
|
| Never had it clog up. But I have all kinds of issues with that
| printer. Always connects to the network but randomly refuses to
| print. Sometimes it only prints half a page. Sometimes it
| prints half a page and retries by itself. Scanning is pretty
| much impossible on macOS because the drivers aren't maintained.
| etc...
|
| It's horrible. But when it prints, the quality is good...
|
| Honestly, I get cold sweats from the thought of having to print
| something.
| hlandau wrote:
| This 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 audiobooks.
|
| On an unrelated note, the modern digital age does deprive me of
| my longtime love of removable media, whether analogue or digital.
| There's a mechanical satisfaction in having a physical token
| which is decisively inserted into something. USB drives just
| don't have the kinetic enjoyment of a floppy disk or tape.
| (Clearly the next iteration of the OP's design needs a motorised
| NFC card loader, ATM-style. ;))
| xafke wrote:
| > (Clearly the next iteration of the OP's design needs a
| motorised NFC card loader, ATM-style. ;))
|
| Author here. TOTALLY!!
| hinkley wrote:
| No!
|
| Look instead to Skylanders. You need to make a 3d printed
| avatar for each movie with an NFC antenna in the base.
| baliex wrote:
| Really cool! I want this for my own vinyl so I can physically
| flip through my collection (with nfc tags stuck on) then place my
| sleeve of choice on a stand (with embedded nfc reader) to listen
| to the "vinyl" without having to touch a computer. That would be
| amazing and you've just proved it's totally doable.
| maweki wrote:
| I 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 these cases. I'm sad that
| Netflix&Co. do not publicize their urls/intents/etc. for smart
| TVs. I'd be happy to call an episode directly.
|
| This setup therefore needs to run through my own media server and
| that's why I sometimes have to resort to pirate-y means, even
| though I have licenses to watch it.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I am slowly preparing myself, but the usage tracking made me
| wonder. What are you planning to do?
| maweki wrote:
| So whenever the card is held to the reader a script starts
| and plays the media and shuts down the TV after the episode
| has run.
|
| It's easy enough to measure the accumulated script runtime
| and disable the reader once a daily allowance has been
| reached. Though I am not a fan of an allowance like that.
|
| Nevertheless, tracking the script runtime is easy enough.
| It's a family TV, but a private TV can easily be tracked via
| power consumption. Then you can track any usage and help
| managing consumption.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Do you have episode run time just baked into each script or
| does it track via some other HA event to know when to turn
| off?
| maweki wrote:
| As I only play a single media file every time the script
| waits for the player going from "playing" to "stopped".
| squeed wrote:
| I, too, built almost the same thing for my kids. It plays
| music, using Spotify, Chromecast, and a whole lot of virtual
| duct-tape via HomeAssistant.
|
| There is also an NFC tag that will turn off all the lights and
| turn on a disco ball :-).
| ramses0 wrote:
| Emergency Party Button strikes again!
| https://youtu.be/nZIfIzNW9xM
| michaelmior wrote:
| > I'm sad that Netflix&Co. do not publicize their
| urls/intents/etc. for smart TVs. I'd be happy to call an
| episode directly.
|
| I haven't really tried this myself, but this Stack Overflow
| question seems to have found a solution[0]. Since you're
| already using Home Assistant, you might want to check out the
| Google Cast integration[1] although Netflix doesn't currently
| seem to have a documented solution.
|
| [0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18217559/launching-
| andro...
|
| [1] https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/cast/
| richardlblair wrote:
| > The TV comes on, one episode runs, TV goes off.
|
| I'm curious how you track that? I don't have HA connected to
| plex yet, but I will. I suppose there might be an event when
| the 'track' changes?
| maweki wrote:
| I play the single media file. Once the player is in "idle" or
| "stopped" instead of "playing" or "paused" the TV is turned
| off.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| > I'm sad that Netflix&Co. do not publicize their
| urls/intents/etc. for smart TVs. I'd be happy to call an
| episode directly.
|
| That is an intentional marketing move. If you bypass the
| loading screen, you're also bypassing advertising for their
| content.
|
| It's in Netflix's interest for you to be aware of their new
| releases or suggestions. They want you to see the loading
| screen.
|
| The last thing they want is for you to start thinking that
| paying them is no longer worth the value.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| This is a really cool project, but also way beyond the skills
| of an average person.
|
| I don't know If I am becoming old fashioned, but I feel things
| were simpler when I was a kid, we had DVD player and we would
| come over to a friends house and watch a movie. We even found
| someone's porn collection!
|
| I feel this issue is endemic through all of society - you have
| to spend more and more of your IQ points figuring out basic
| shit, and eventually it's gets too much and you have no IQ
| points left to figure out big questions in life
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Is it not expected for people (or generations) to learn new
| things (and not learn obsolete things)?
|
| My kids learned how to navigate Apple TV and the Apple TV
| remote at age 3 to go to Infuse or PBS kids app. And I tell
| them to turn off the TV after x episode of y time limit, and
| they know how to do that.
| pempem wrote:
| I think this ignores that marketing is essentially
| insidious. The goal is to get you to do more of x. We spend
| a lot of life building up the mental tools and energy and
| math skills to understand whether we actually want to do x
| or whether someone has simply suggested it very strongly.
|
| Asking a 3 year old to develop that mental faculty just
| because we are a new generation learning new things feels
| incorrect.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Is it not expected for people (or generations) to learn
| new things
|
| If they are useful, and's an improvement, sure
|
| But we just enshittified an experience that used to be
| good, and now have to 'learn' to cope with it
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I beg to differ. I prefer being able to search and select
| and instantly watch whatever I (or the kids) want (due to
| high reliability of broadband internet), over
| transporting physical media back and forth from a store
| or library and putting it into a dedicated machine for
| it.
|
| I specifically recall how annoying it was to change the
| input on a TV because for some reason, manufacturers
| didn't put that button on TVs or all remotes.
|
| If my 3 year olds can learn to navigate tvOS to the right
| app or infuse library and pick the Bluey episode they
| want, I feel like it's a pretty good sign of things not
| being shitty.
| boredtofears wrote:
| We went back to DVDs for my kid, actually. My wife and I
| really like the idea of a hard start and end to a video (with
| no chance for algorithmic tendrils to reach you) and we like
| the idea of having to put in some amount of effort to start
| the video. It's on demand, but not as on demand as scrolling
| through a streaming service is.
|
| I can't quite articulate why this feels like an improvement
| to me. Maybe it's because I have experienced decision
| paralysis on streaming services so many times.
|
| Tons of DVD collections being given away for almost nothing
| on FB marketplace right now, too.
| fullstop wrote:
| I ripped a lot of my kids' DVDs because far too many of
| them had unskippable ads before the title screen. They
| wouldn't even let you fast forward!
|
| > I can't quite articulate why this feels like an
| improvement to me. Maybe it's because I have experienced
| decision paralysis on streaming services so many times.
|
| Amazon recently changed their Android TV app such that it
| auto-plays previews if you leave a title selected for more
| than a few seconds. I _hate_ this feature and it gives me
| both decision paralysis and anxiety over finding something
| interesting to watch before the preview starts. I 'd sooner
| turn the TV off than deal with that. If the setting for
| this can be changed, it is not available in the app itself.
| gffrd wrote:
| We often decide on things by process of elimination: it's
| easier for us to identify what we don't want than what we
| do.
|
| If there are 5 choices available, the effort to decide on
| one is low as the contrast between choices is high ... and
| holding all options in memory is easy.
|
| If there are 1,000 choices, the effort is high and the
| contrast is low ... and you can't hold them all in memory,
| so there's always _something_ right around the bend that
| _might_ be the perfect thing.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| > you have to spend more and more of your IQ points figuring
| out basic shit
|
| I'm not sure that watching a movie on a streaming service
| requires more IQ points than watching it on a DVD.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| It does if you forgot your password and the service logged
| you out, again.
| dusted wrote:
| I thought about that earlier today, I'm pretty sure it
| does.
|
| Worst-case DVD experience: Step 1. Unbox TV and DVD Player
| Step 2. Plug scart cable from DVD player into TV. Step 3.
| Connect TV and DVD player to power, insert batteries in
| remotes. Step 4. Turn on DVD Player, TV, press "Source" a
| few times, the DVD player shows something. Step 5. Gander
| at some DVDs, decide which to watch. Step 6. Press Eject
| Step 7. Insert DVD Step 8. Press Eject Step 9. Press Play.
|
| Now, assuming that electricity is provided, care to write
| down how to netflix? From the beginning, so we need to
| start by unboxing our very first computer, setting it up to
| the point where we can connect to the internet, also, we
| need an internet connection, oh, and some way to order
| that, so a phone.. Now, there will be a few steps before we
| reach to the point where we can create an email account,
| needed to even register for the streaming service.. Oh,
| something about credit cards too, and passwords for stuff?
|
| Sure, you will think this is absurd, because all that stuff
| is "already in place" yeah, it is, for us, we set it up bit
| by bit, it's an enormous amount of infrastructure and
| different, disconnected concepts and services that is now
| REQUIRED before you can watch a movie..
|
| I'll bet I can teach most 4 year olds to go from "empty
| living room with a power socket" to "watching dvd movies".
| You'll have a hard time convincing me you can teach them to
| go from empty living room with a power socket, to watching
| netflix before their next birthday or two :)
| hinkley wrote:
| Is there a product opportunity here? What are the risks?
| adamrezich wrote:
| Licensing.
| hinkley wrote:
| Of what? I wouldn't presume doing a Spotify here but
| linking to existing services or just your movie library.
| The movie poster art?
| sgt wrote:
| Deep links are now possible with Infuse as well:
|
| https://support.firecore.com/hc/en-us/articles/215090997-API...
|
| I also evaluated Plex but ended up with Infuse as it seemed
| perfect for my needs. The Apple TV app is great. Plex probably
| has more features though. I renew it once a year.
| xafke wrote:
| OP here
|
| Wow, thanks for sharing this! I used to pay for Infuse as well,
| but switched to Plex for the deep linking. Might go back to
| Infuse because the Plex app occasionally freezes at startup.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| There's a commercial equivalent we use for audio-only stories
| called Yoto - really high quality. Same level of agency, but less
| screen time. Good for bedtimes, but the kids also carry the thing
| round the house to listen to.
| TomJansen wrote:
| This is a very cool project, and I like the nostalgic feel of it!
| However, this project got me thinking:
|
| We are on a forum filled with people working on these super
| addicting infinite scroll technologies at YouTube, Instagram,
| maybe even TikTok. At the same time though, this post removing
| all these addictive technologies has reached the #1 spot on HN
| (and HN is deliberately made without any of this addicting
| tech!!)
|
| I think it is time for people to really realize how addicting the
| tech they are making is, without masking it with words like
| 'friction' and 'engagement'. And hopefully they will slowly work
| on making their tech a little bit less addictive.
|
| Before Covid we had some kind of movement like this, but it has
| sadly dwindled.
| juergenpabel wrote:
| I build something very similar, but for playing music/audio books
| in my kids rooms. But this is not why I am commenting: I found
| "HERMA 5028 Universal" stickers to be a very good fit for
| rfid/nfc cards; I don't know if they're available where you live,
| but here in germany they're a great solution for labeling cards.
|
| PS: I will also publish my solution once I rewrite a few parts of
| it (cleanup).
| leononame wrote:
| I'd be super interested in your writeup, I'd like to build a
| homemade Tonie for my kids as well. Any way you could contact
| me when you're finished or do you have a blog I could regularly
| check out?
| niedbalski wrote:
| We 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.
| edu wrote:
| I'm going this way, also our local library has a very nice
| selection of movies in DVD so we can expand the experience to
| going there and picking up.
| rmnclmnt wrote:
| This! We also discovered out teeny tiny local library has a
| movie section. Each time I feel like a kid in a video store
| from the 90's! You can even book a title on their webapp and
| pick it up when available, it really feels great.
|
| Having offline and finite media consumption feels much more
| satisfying than the modern endless scrolling IMHO.
| hinkley wrote:
| Disc movies get trashed by children young enough for an NFC
| system to be appropriate.
| tinyshi wrote:
| Now only problem is get Apple TV remote from my 4 year daughter
| back...
| left-struck wrote:
| > And finally, if you're a non-English speaker, Blu-rays will
| include a dubbed version in your native language. This is a big
| plus for the kids, especially when they're as young as mine are
| now.
|
| I grew up in a country where English is not the primary language
| spoken and when I was young all the cool shows and movies were in
| English. As a kid this was a huge incentive and went far above
| and beyond any education I had in English in my home country. I
| can't overstate how valuable this has been to me as an immigrant
| to an English speaking country.
| theodric wrote:
| I have this general feeling based my 21 years bouncing around
| Europe that subtitle countries have better English than dub
| countries, although I'm not proposing that the link is
| causative
| noduerme wrote:
| My perception from traveling to 40+ countries is that
| countries where dubbing is common do so for the reason that
| the population is more illiterate and lower-educated in
| general, and that trend just extends to having less fluency
| in other languages.
| Novosell wrote:
| Germany and France, famous for being lowly educated and
| illiterate.
| NemoNobody wrote:
| I didn't kno that.
| redleader55 wrote:
| I don't think that is true. France is a highly educated
| country, while for them dubbing is a part of culture. I
| would say the same applies to Japan and China. I'm neither
| one of these nationalities.
| gpvos wrote:
| It's just smaller vs. larger languages making dubbing more
| worth the cost. Education in France and Germany isn't worse
| than elsewhere in Europe. People there do speak English
| slightly worse and with a stronger accent on average.
| buran77 wrote:
| There are many reasons for the distinction, culture and
| money being chief among them.
|
| Dubbing is far more expensive than subs. So countries like
| Germany or France would be more likely to afford it.
| They're also countries which try to promote the use of
| their language for historical and national pride reasons
| (as opposed to Anglicization of everything) so it makes
| them even more likely to have dubs. They also had dubbing
| for so long that it became cultural and maybe even
| expected.
|
| Contrast that with countries like the former Eastern block
| which had no foreign material to speak of until the '90s,
| and when they finally did they couldn't afford dubbing, so
| they went with the quick and easy route of subs. They also
| probably have fewer aspirations for the promotion of their
| own language and priorities practicality over pride,
| embracing foreign languages faster.
| meigwilym wrote:
| Did you visit Britain?
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| It's definitely a contributing factor. Living in the
| Netherlands, Dutch kids learn English through Youtube and
| Tiktok. Since it's a small country there's less Dutch spoken
| online, as opposed to German which has dubs for a lot of
| movies / TV shows.
| seszett wrote:
| The author is apparently a Dutch speaker, and English fluency
| really isn't a problem in Flanders or the Netherlands.
|
| I think the language is close enough to English that it's
| easily picked up even watching only dubbed movies as a kid. In
| contrast friends of mine who mostly watched French-dubbed
| movies when they were small (because they were close to the
| border and Club Dorothee was better than whatever was available
| here) didn't learn much French, but they're fluent in English
| today (and that's with mandatory French lessons at school, much
| earlier than English lessons).
|
| So English-version of movies is really unnecessary for kids
| here IMO. In my family we only watch French or Dutch (dubbed or
| original) movies with the kids and I think that's fine.
| phito wrote:
| As a French-speaking Belgian living in the Dutch speaking
| part, in my experience and opinion, it's the opposite. Most
| French speaking folks can't speak a word of English because
| everything is dubbed, they are never exposed to the language.
| Meanwhile, there's no Dutch dubbing (because there's not
| enough Dutch speaking audience to justify the cost) and they
| all have fantastic English skills.
| seszett wrote:
| I'm also a French speaker living in Flanders with a Flemish
| partner, and children who speak both languages.
|
| I'm pretty sure the ease of speaking English for Dutch
| speakers comes mostly from the closeness of the language
| (as evidenced by my comment on people who watched French-
| dubbed anime as kids, not Japanese original or English-
| dubbed). And TV content for children (including _De
| leeuwenkoning_ or _Een luizenleven_ , to take examples from
| the article) is almost universally dubbed in Dutch as far
| as I can tell.
|
| My personal opinion is that watching movies in English is
| really not as useful as people think it is, it does help
| once you already know the language but children just don't
| pick up a language by watching movies in that language
| without having already some basic knowledge of that
| language.
|
| IMO (but it's starting to get off-topic) it's more
| generally Latin languages that are a hindrance for their
| native speakers for some reason, and globally Latin
| speakers are just always bad at learning other (non-Latin)
| languages, especially at _speaking_ them. But it 's not
| because they're watching _Le Roi Lion_ rather than _The
| Lion King_.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| As a counterargument, my German I learnt from Derrick I
| believe is much better than the English of equal educated
| German people I have met. I'm pretty convinced that the
| dubbing in Germany has a lot to do with it.
| sigio wrote:
| As a 70's/80's kid, there wasn't much dutch language kids-tv,
| but there was a lot of english language kids-tv (mostly
| british). And I think I learned most of my english from
| saturday morning cartoons. English in school came later.
| Shame it doesn't work that well for learning japanese,
| because I do still watch a lot of anime (subbed), but still
| only know a handful of japanese words.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I'm from Flanders and I believe I learnt most English from
| JR/Dallas with Dutch subtitles and most German from Derrick
| with Dutch subtitles.
| fhe wrote:
| for me it was computer games, specifically Civ 2. Imagine
| playing that as a second-grader with zero English. But I had
| strong motivation, and ploughed through the game, dictionary in
| hand.
| anthk wrote:
| Same here. Either the original Japanese release, or the
| English fandubbed JRPG release for emulators. The choice was
| clear there; and my English skills skyrocketted with Chrono
| Trigger.
| foobarian wrote:
| At least you had graphics. Zork I did it for me, I still
| remember my first word: "forest". Never could figure out wtf
| a "stiletto" is though, it wasn't in the ancient dictionary I
| had at the time.
| anthk wrote:
| As I Spaniard I could still guess 'forest' could be somehow
| related to 'forestal', which is something related to the
| woods/countryside.
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| When I was 14-18 I watched anime (japanese dubs with eng subs).
| The censorship of the german dubs got me into it and I hated
| german subs plus the english subs were faster and the germans
| often were double translated (jap > eng > ger).
|
| My english grades were very good thanks to it. Now I'm exposed
| more to english (movies, shows, internet, os) than german I've
| switched to german subs and started watching anime again 20
| years later.
|
| I keep fucking up numbers as german numbers are one-hundred-
| five-and-fifty instead of one-hundred-fifty-five and too many
| of my thoughts are in english.
|
| There is a small movement trying to make both acceptable
|
| https://zwanzigeins.jetzt/
| left-struck wrote:
| Yeah my native language is afrikaans which also has the 4 and
| 20 for 24 vibe. For me the difficulty is was with times
| tables strangely enough, as long after I started thinking
| primarily in English I was still doing times tables in
| afrikaans
| timthorn wrote:
| > German numbers are one-hundred-five-and-fifty instead of
| one-hundred-fifty-five and too many of my thoughts are in
| english
|
| Both are fine in the UK, though the "five-and-fifty" form is
| somewhat old fashioned. My Grandmother used to say numbers
| like that, especially for time. I refer you also to "Sing a
| Song of Sixpence"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sing_a_Song_of_Sixpence
| Symbiote wrote:
| Perhaps in some regions, but in general asking "is this the
| stop for the eight-and-sixty bus?" would confuse most
| British people.
|
| I've only even seen the Germanic number ordering in poetry.
| timthorn wrote:
| I agree, and it is an unusual turn of phrase these days,
| but I think it's the scenario here that would be
| confusing. The number 68 bus is a label rather than a
| quantity, which makes a difference.
| joseda-hg wrote:
| HTTP ERROR 503 Service Unavailable
|
| Maybe this one of those sites that don't let you view them
| from outside their intended region, but I'd use 403 for that,
| so I assume it just got hugged
| boobsbr wrote:
| > german numbers are one-hundred-five-and-fifty
|
| So are Dutch numbers.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Would you have recommendations for an English speaker trying
| to learn German? Where do I go to find anime with good German
| subtitles? Or, maybe even a German dub?
| RGamma wrote:
| proxer.me is a prominent German anime/manga community
| (needs login for seeing episodes). German-language stuff is
| typically licensed and needs to be watched elsewhere
| though.
| jimbokun wrote:
| That's funny I thought you were going to say it helped you
| learn Japanese.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Funny side note google translate maims that large first line
| translating it (correctly but also incorrectly) as "Also
| twenty-one and not just twenty-one!". Just a funny note where
| the translation is content correct but not context correct.
| quickthrower327 wrote:
| Furthermore, being forced to read subtitles can greatly
| increase literacy.
| michaelmior wrote:
| I've found that most streaming services tend to have a good
| collection of subtitles and audio in various languages as well
| although I haven't compared that to physical media.
| wccrawford wrote:
| As an American that only knew English, Japanese media that was
| only available without English was my #1 motivation to learn
| more Japanese. By the time I was low-intermediate, basically
| everything was fan-subbed day 1, and it killed a lot of my
| motivation. There were still light novels, but the ones I
| really want to read are still quite a bit above me, and I have
| barely progressed since then.
|
| And we're on the verge of AI being able to translate
| _everything_ in basically real time, spoken or written.
|
| I agree with your estimation of the value of media you want
| that's not available in your language, in regards to language
| learning. I'm a little sad that that motivation won't exist for
| many people in the future, but also happy that they can just
| enjoy the content.
| jimbokun wrote:
| It's interesting to me that in spite of everything you point
| out, demand for learning English (and other languages to a
| lesser effect) as a Second Language seems higher than ever.
| stovestone wrote:
| Soon, your sons will learn how to hack into this system, bypass
| your time limits, use the NFC cards you provided to play other
| cartoons, or convert your NFC reader into a room door lock.
| xafke wrote:
| OP here
|
| I hope so!
| jonwinstanley wrote:
| This is absolutely awesome.
|
| For v2 I'd say the NFC cards be the size and shape of a VHS and
| you have to leave them in the slot to play. If you take them out
| it stops playing.
|
| Maybe v3 you need to virtually rewind them before they work
| again? :-)
| xafke wrote:
| OP here
|
| Definitely crossed my mind! Especially the slot system!
|
| Rewinding could be fun as well. I could use our Sonos speakers
| to play the VHS rewinding sound, lol
| jonwinstanley wrote:
| Hahaha excellent!
| flir wrote:
| Kids are gonna go to college still believing you have to
| rewind discs.
|
| Do it. That's a long game prank.
| alias_neo wrote:
| My mum got mad at me once, when I was younger, because I
| wouldn't rewind the DVD before I returned it to the rental
| shop. My dad had to confirm before she believed me; thought
| I was just being lazy.
| seszett wrote:
| > _slot system_
|
| I have a similar setup but I've been using chip cards and a
| card reader. I find it much more intuitive than just placing
| an NFC card over a reader. The card reader blinks when a card
| is inserted, changes colour, it's all very obvious and
| physical, with immediate feedback.
|
| In my case I only use it with music though (I deem them still
| too small to choose movies themselves).
|
| I've been using reclaimed chip cards (various bank cards
| mostly) which all have an easy to read kind of ID, but I
| haven't been able to find a way to write things to blank
| cards as easy as one can do with NFC cards though.
| turbocon wrote:
| V4 all the cards are stored in a little blockbuster and the
| child has tokens he can use to 'rent' movies
|
| V5 he starts franchising....
| greener_grass wrote:
| This is fun, but wouldn't some second hand Blu Rays have been
| simpler?
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I'm not going to knock the idea down because that's how I grew
| up but, depending on your setup, buying a Blu-ray player means
| you have to hook it up (do you have enough inputs? Enough room?
| Do you need an extension cord?), choose the right source every
| time ("no, you're in HDMI1, you need S-Video"), have a second
| remote ("Have you seen the remote? No, the other one"), figure
| out why the box is empty (perhaps the disc is under the couch?
| And why does it have marmelade on it?), etc.
|
| Maybe there's a plus to solutions like those where you learn
| how things work because you need to get them all to
| collaborate. But that's a different discussion.
| alias_neo wrote:
| 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.
| supportengineer wrote:
| 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.
| DannyPage wrote:
| Congrats on having the only kids on the planet that are
| gentle with everything and have never broken a single toy
| or object they have come into contact! What is your
| secret??
| scopendo wrote:
| This is a product.
| nateberkopec wrote:
| Is there an option for an NFC reader that doesn't require 3d
| printing or soldering?
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| You could probably use an old Android phone
| nolan_wyss wrote:
| I don't have kids, but now I really want to build something like
| that too! Really nice idea and well executed!
| nanna wrote:
| Personally I would just buy my kids a dvd player.
|
| Edit: seem the author himself sort of agrees. He buys Blu-Rays
| and puts them on the Plex. Could just skip the Plex part and let
| them play the Blu-Rays...
| jalk wrote:
| My kids were very a bit too reckless with the DVDs - thrown all
| over the living room and some got scratched and/or soiled to
| the point they couldn't be played and the dvd tray took some
| rough handling as well.
| nanna wrote:
| Than give them a VCR :P
| calini wrote:
| I love this, the tactility of it is super good, and a good break
| from a world where everything is touchscreens!
| passwordoops wrote:
| This would also be amazing for tech-disadvantaged seniors!
| harshitaneja wrote:
| Looks great. I am working on side to learn product design by
| working on a similar system for music. The idea is to have the
| tactile feel of a vinyl like system but with the features of a
| digital library and ecosystem. The base implementation was really
| straightforward and hardly a few hours but to make it bridge the
| gap we see with our digital tools emulating analog ones is quite
| fun to work on. From the latency involved between placing the
| card to the output from a remote service, the sound dial's
| latency when paired with bluetooth speakers all take one away
| from the experience. It's also fun to learn little
| leathercrafting and concrete moulding for the prototype design.
| juujian wrote:
| I always thought it would be nice to simply add QR codes to my
| vinyls. Get that feel of browsing, and then simply open the
| Spotify URL.
| djhworld wrote:
| This is really cool and demonstrates the power of stuff like home
| assistant really well.
|
| I've recently rediscovered my old music collection from the pre-
| streaming days on an old NAS, thousands of mp3s with carefully
| curated id3 tags etc. I'm almost tempted to create a similar
| system but for albums!
| braggerxyz wrote:
| Nice idea, and great implementation. And I really resonate with
| the "physical media is great" mantra. That's why I still buy a
| lot of DVDs of the movies I or my kids like. Last winter we had a
| two day internet outage, and all of the neighbors came to me for
| lending DVDs :D That experience reinforced my believe in physical
| media more than ever!
| ramses0 wrote:
| For "project adjacent", look at `catt` - Cast ALL the things!
|
| https://blog.fuzzymistborn.com/homeassistant-and-catt-cast-a...
|
| You can cast YouTube URLs directly, as well as general media
| files over the local network.
|
| My theory is QR-codes up to a camera:
| http://192.168.1.123/randomvid.php?topic=XYZ => shuf | head -1 |
| catt --target=$MY_TV
|
| You can even do QR code reading via a web-page, and "add-to-
| homepage" if you wanted to put it onto an iPad.
|
| Obviously the OP project is better thought out, but it's quite
| good to learn different bits and pieces and strategies about deep
| linking and internal media.
| dmd wrote:
| I made a similar system but for music, using QR codes on plastic
| cards and a webcam, when my daughter was 1. After a year or so we
| switched to just having a standalone numkey pad where she could
| just punch in numbers from a jukebox-style catalog.
| https://github.com/dmd/nkplay/
|
| She's now 10, and knows ~100 playlists _by number_. "I want to
| listen to 37!"
| josephernest wrote:
| Your numpad solution looks great! Would you have a photo of the
| whole setup? I thought about doing the same, but I fear to end
| with cables and PCB everywhere in my children's room if I take
| this path :)
| dmd wrote:
| There's honestly nothing really to see. It's a raspberry pi
| in a standard plastic case[0] with 3 cables coming out of it
| - power, usb to the numkey, and audio (male to male headphone
| jack) to the speakers.
|
| The pi and power are hidden behind a bookshelf, so all that
| is actually visible is the numkey and the speaker.
|
| [0] https://www.microcenter.com/product/608178/4_Official_Cas
| e_-...
| bigfatfrock wrote:
| Amazing 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/rig yourself a case! (yes, of course, another $X for
| screens, sound etc)
|
| I have run into such a crazy amount of cool hacky kid tech in the
| past couple of days for some reason (this and Makey Makey), and
| am so lucky to have done so. I can't wait to outfit my kids with
| this, it is going to blow their minds.
|
| I want to hook it up to Jellyfish because I feel Plex is total
| marketing trash these days but as soon as I can get time I am all
| over this.
| vdfs wrote:
| If you search more you can cut price by half
| rtkwe wrote:
| You can get loads of NFC tags as stickers extremely cheap. I
| think using the cards is better here just for durability but if
| you're willing to put in a bit more DIY and accept a slightly
| less durable final product you could print it on a heavy card
| stock and stick one of the innumerable NFC stickers to that
| then laminate.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| 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?
| bigfatfrock wrote:
| I for one don't own a blu-ray anymore and really don't want
| to - they feel to me like LaserDiscs or BetaMax at this
| point! :)
|
| Plus, to fathom a three-year-old-destroyer-of-property
| handling your blu-ray disc collection, I shudder! They are
| great frisbees, and coasters, and etc.
|
| If I even still owned blu-rays I might consider ripping them
| and then converting to this just to avoid the above mentioned
| pain.
| 76SlashDolphin wrote:
| I think that the fragility of Blu-Rays is a great way to
| teach a kid responsibility. You only let your kid have
| access to their Blu-Rays and if they scratch them or break
| them it's over - no more movie. They'll learn after they
| break a few.
| samspot wrote:
| My kids did not learn, perhaps because new kids kept
| coming to learn the lesson. And they generally can't
| connect a non-working disc to a specific act. Instead, a
| disc stops working after dozens of cumulative actions. We
| never replaced any broken discs either, and just slowly
| saw our collection dwindle from 20 working discs to
| something like 2.
|
| My favorite example was the kids using dvds as roller
| skates to slide around the room.
| hinkley wrote:
| 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.
| fullstop wrote:
| > I would probably stick with Blu-ray approach?
|
| Kids, little ones especially, are quite rough on discs.
| That's if they even make it back into the case!
| pfranz wrote:
| Sooo many forum postings of parents lamented the loss of VHS
| when DVDs and Blu rays took over because of the kid factor. I
| saw a lot of people backing up their discs and giving their
| kids the duplicates because of the cost of (especially
| Disney) films. I also think slot-load (rare for disk players)
| is a lot more durable than tray-load for kids.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Backing up is the way, disks should be cheap! That's the
| whole point of them
| open-paren wrote:
| Unfortunately and at least as of March, Jellyfin doesn't
| support deeplinks.
|
| https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-androidtv/discussions/3...
| philjackson wrote:
| What a brilliant idea! Not everyone's motivation of course, but
| I'm sure this has valid business potential.
| eadmund wrote:
| This is an awesome example of the kind of innovation which
| overlong copyright prevents.
|
| There's no particularly good reason that it should be legally
| impermissible for someone to build and sell a system like this
| loaded with movies from before, say, 2010 (or 2000, or whatever),
| but instead what the prospective entrepreneur would be legally
| able to include would be ... Steamboat Willie, and other films of
| that vintage (as an aside, while Disney's had a pretty rough
| couple of years, I'm pretty sure that Steamboat Willie being out
| of copyright has nothing to do with any of that).
|
| This sort of experience shouldn't be limited to children of high-
| tech folks with access to 3D printers: it should be possible for
| any child -- or adult!
| nd6s8 wrote:
| That kind of innovation is quite common abroad. No one is
| paying for content or cares about copyright in poorer
| countries.
|
| There is more content now then there are eyeballs or time
| available to consume any of it.
|
| What happens to value and price of product when there is more
| of it produced than consumed?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Keep an eye on the financials of the streaming services; at
| the moment few are profitable, and they will increase their
| prices and/or decrease their spending on new productions.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| If there's a business case to be made, companies like Netflix
| might release a physical product for this... but I doubt they
| would, because of the investment and time required vs the
| revenue. Spotify tried something with an in-car device, but
| they cancelled and recalled the product pretty quickly.
|
| Streaming services rely on volume; for them, hardware just
| isn't worth it.
| backwoodsbk wrote:
| Sweet project! I did something similar a few years back after
| reading this: https://www.home-
| assistant.io/integrations/tag/#building-an-...
| NemoNobody wrote:
| I love this. I dislike the half hour brackets. Love how the OP
| frequently talks about his childhood and being able to pick
| movies - he didn't half a timer going that determined when the
| movie ended, the movie did.
|
| Kids movies are like an hour long. How are kids ever going to
| develop any sort of an attention span if they never see the
| ending of things
| mostly_harmless wrote:
| Somewhat related: I wanted to track watch time, and perhaps set a
| time limit with Plex and HomeAssistant. Has anyone come up with a
| solution I can cheat off of?
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| I've been buying CDs as well as burning FLAC albums I have on
| blanks for basically this same reason, the limited choices and
| slightly higher switching costs is more enjoyable to me. And CDs
| still cost about as much as they ever did, which means they're
| much cheaper now with inflation.
|
| I found vinyl CD labels [1] that I can print on my color laser
| printer that look pretty decent, it only takes a few minutes to
| burn the CD, find an image of a retail disc and put it in the
| label's Canva template.
|
| My car is a 2017 and it still has a CD player, and I also found a
| fairly inexpensive portable player [2] that charges with USB-C,
| the anti-skip is pretty impressive now. I can put it in my pocket
| and walk around or clean the house and I've never had it skip, it
| will actually spin down the disc when it's read far enough ahead.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C2V9D3FD
|
| [2] https://klimtechs.com/products/klim-nomad-portable-cd-
| player...
| lxgr wrote:
| If you want a really impressive portable optical disc format,
| consider looking into MiniDisc!
|
| The players are even more impressive (I have one that plays
| something like 20 hours on a single AA battery), you can re-
| record the disks via USB using a WebUSB based webapp [1] these
| days for NetMD recorders, and the disks actually are almost
| infinitely re-recordable and much more stable than CD-Rs (which
| are write-once and only last a couple of years).
|
| [1] https://stefano.brilli.me/webminidisc/
| wsintra2022 wrote:
| Loved 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!
| supportengineer wrote:
| Imagine the benefit to the child if their parent was sitting
| next to them reading, or building something together out of
| blocks
| nthState wrote:
| I'd buy this
| bilekas wrote:
| This is really cool, it actually reminds me of how people thought
| the future would be in the past.
|
| "Ah you'll just scan a punch card of course and it will play a
| movie."
|
| You're the hipster Dad now.
| jollyllama wrote:
| Very interesting that it's NFC is the most bang-for-your buck
| interface. Feels like a failure of software and hardware (button
| kit) alternatives.
| ellisv wrote:
| I really like the vinyl stickers for the NFC cards. I recently
| got some blank white NFC cards and have been trying to figure out
| how to decorate them.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| This is a cool and nerdy project, and I support that.
|
| From a functional perspective would it not be simpler to simply
| burn dvd / blu-rays and if they are old enough use that system?
| (Given that kids are not exactly careful with physical media
| burning copies takes away the worry)
|
| I dont get a feel for how many movies you have printed cards for,
| but it doesn't look that many.
|
| Something like a Streamdeck with buttons for each movie could
| work but then you do lose part of the physical media feeling.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| I discovered how cheap NFC tags and readers were a few years ago
| and now I have completed several hobby projects based on that
| concept.
|
| When we buy books for our younger nieces and nephews we buy
| companion stuffed animals and then sew an NFC tag (the small
| quarter size ones) into them with the YouTube read-along url
| encoded on it.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| It's funny to think that 20 years ago at an IBM austin office
| there was a demo of a similar thing (early 2000s) - before
| streaming was a thing yet, before YouTube, where Home Theatre PCs
| were around but more of a homebrew niche.
| Piko wrote:
| Oh man, I read "NFT movie library" and was super confused because
| these cards are very much fungible... But a very cool project!
| loeg wrote:
| We bought an off-the-shelf product like this (though, audio only)
| for our toddler. "Yoto Player." She can self-serve some stories
| or songs using cards to select a collection and it works great.
| supportengineer wrote:
| An incredible amount of effort was made to avoid spending quality
| time with their children. Is this something to celebrate?
| Sakos wrote:
| I 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.
| Royshiloh wrote:
| this is so sweet!
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-09-10 23:01 UTC)