I automated math education for my 9 year-old. It's a Unity application where a student required to solve basic (currently) math examples.
For 10 examples you're getting a 25-cent coin from a coin dispenser. You can keep it or you can use this money to buy Internet access. My OpenWrt router is connected straight to coin acceptor. For one coin you're getting 30 minutes of Internet on all devices (iPad and PC).
Since it's all automated I don't need to involve too much into education process. Math score in school has greatly improved, the kiddo solved thousands of examples.
Coin dispenser is proprietary (found on ebay, one of popular model), so I literally had to hack the USB protocol. The coin acceptor had no USB interface, so I had to introduce one. I've connected this USB to my OpenWrt 32-bit router, which is also ARM - so I had to hack some USB libraries along the way so my binaries can work with USB right from OpenWrt.
One of the advantages - there is no such thing as unlimited Internet. You always need to do some work to get it. Another one - there is interruption moment when it's over. There are lots of other good things. Like you can control the number of examples that needs to be solved. How difficult they are. Kiddo also understands what money is and how easy it is to spend money and how hard it is to earn.
I'm looking for co-founder to turn it into a business.
But I think even simple button that activates Internet for 30 minutes would work, since it introduces interruption between "consuming flow".
Genius! Was this an original idea or adapted from elsewhere? Any plans to automate the ¢ to minute ratio when your 9yo begins to establish quarter wealth?
I haven't seen anyone doing the same or similar thing. I only did it because I thought it's gonna be easy to implement. It wasn't too easy, but it was a lot of fun.
I also made the Unity app to support 3D animations, and I'm planning to improve it. For example, it's easier to explain what "30" is with 3 rows of 10 balls (each row is 5 + 5). Animation for subtraction is different, I experimented, added 3D kittens running around, VFX effects, and so on. So kids also have a visual representation of math operations.
I'm ready to share/demonstrate the implementation to folks in South San Francisco or nearby. I would even Open Source it if there is enough interest, but can't guarantee it's gonna be super quick without some help from interested enthusiasts.
In the future I'm planning to improve math engine and visual part, so it's easier to understand what math is. There are many ideas on how to automate, since coin dispenser and acceptor support all kinds of coins.
You could skip the coins and just have the unity app spit out time limited guest passwords for a network portal login, like a hotel does. I mean does openwrt support that?
It would be easy to add this to OpenWrt I think. I wanted to use coins since they're physical objects, and I also wanted to educate on what money is, how to use money, and earn money.
Funny anecdote happened one week ago, when child got back from school and said "Hey dad, look what I've got". He had 100-dollar bill in his hand, I'm not even kidding. He said "I traded some Pokemon cards at school"...
For 10 examples you're getting a 25-cent coin from a coin dispenser. You can keep it or you can use this money to buy Internet access. My OpenWrt router is connected straight to coin acceptor. For one coin you're getting 30 minutes of Internet on all devices (iPad and PC).
Since it's all automated I don't need to involve too much into education process. Math score in school has greatly improved, the kiddo solved thousands of examples.
Coin dispenser is proprietary (found on ebay, one of popular model), so I literally had to hack the USB protocol. The coin acceptor had no USB interface, so I had to introduce one. I've connected this USB to my OpenWrt 32-bit router, which is also ARM - so I had to hack some USB libraries along the way so my binaries can work with USB right from OpenWrt.
One of the advantages - there is no such thing as unlimited Internet. You always need to do some work to get it. Another one - there is interruption moment when it's over. There are lots of other good things. Like you can control the number of examples that needs to be solved. How difficult they are. Kiddo also understands what money is and how easy it is to spend money and how hard it is to earn.
I'm looking for co-founder to turn it into a business.
But I think even simple button that activates Internet for 30 minutes would work, since it introduces interruption between "consuming flow".