Ask HN: Tablet for kids How cheap and how should it be done?

[ThomPete]

Having seen my 7 month old son being seriously attracted to my iPad, I am beginning to believe there is quite some opportunity in creating a tablet for kids 2 years maybe 1 year and up.

I have done some preliminary research on pricing but it's all very vague as I am not a hardware expert.

How cheap could it get done and what would you like to see in such a tablet?

[JarekS]

I've seen my daughter playing with iPhone and had the same idea... Here are my thoughts on the subject:

- should be cheap but if you have kids you know that people can spend a lot of money on toys.

- Should look "tough to break" - must be pretty robust when kid drops it shouldn't break easily.

- Should have text 2 speech built in for all the navigation

- initial set of apps must bring educational value (ABCs, initial math, games that you must count to win etc.).

[SingAlong → JarekS]

The outer body must be spill resistant. very important since kids tend to spill a lot, everything from food to water. Oh and the worse case, since you are looking at 2yo or upwards, who knows... your spill resistant body might also protect against accidental pee :)

If you do it right, you can have your own app store that lets parents buy apps therefore allowing you or other developers to develop apps for it (be sure to approve each of them to fit the audience). But you'll need to hide this option since you don't want a kid to even accidentally find it and wondering how to close it :)

I wouldn't start with Android beacuse you don't be able to run it faster on cheap hardware. But maybe linux kernel with ARM support and modified XFCE with touch-screen (capacitive or anything cheaper).

And maybe an accelerometer/compass will be cool since that'll help kids play games easier :) (kids 2/3yrs old don't have firmness in their hand to play games with touch screen)

checkout "Julius", for text to speech on linux.

[ThomPete → SingAlong]

Yes all good suggestions.

And yes app store is top a must as this thing wont be anything without an ecosystem.

Also it could be that you would both have a smaller device and a bigger one.

The smaller device is their running around, outside doing stuff and then the other would be their home device.

We don't want to teach our children to sit still and not use their body. So location based games, Treasurehunt etc. could be a way to get them moving around.

It's definitely an under served and under researched field.

[ThomPete → JarekS]

Text to speech seems like a brilliant suggestion. Perhaps even speech 2 text. It could even be used to teach kids to speak faster since it could react when they started speaking their first words. Love it!

[donohoe → ThomPete]

Text to Speech would be awesome but I would put it down as a 'nice to have'.

Also, please bear in mind that there has been no substantive research to say that any of those education toys actually educate. In fact, it could be argued that they inhibit or at best just occupy time.

[ThomPete → donohoe]

You are quite right that there is no substantive research.

However there are people like Seymour Papert who seem to have done some good work in the field. I can recommend his book Mindstorms.

[stcredzero → ThomPete]

The Speak & Spell returns!

[davidw]

There are Java enabled phones that are pretty cheap and reasonably robust. Ideally someone would take one of those and fish out all the actual telephony stuff (no accidental 911 calls or calls to random people). I think you could do it for 50 euros if they were mass produced...

[ThomPete → davidw]

But Wouldn't you think the display would need to be bigger?

[pmccool → ThomPete]

Definitely, especially if going touchscreen(which is the way to go - imagine how often a stylus would go missing). The resolution needn't be massive, so I would hope this wouldn't be costly.

[davidw → pmccool]

Depending on the child and age, you could get away with buttons just fine, rather than a touch screen. My daughter started wanting to play with phones at about 1. She just liked to push the buttons and probably wouldn't have cared much about a touch screen, but did drop the phone we gave her a lot.

[pmccool]

The ability to print, e.g. drawings. Nothing too elaborate, screendumps would be fine.

[david927]

Check out the Notion Ink Adam (http://www.notionink.in/adamtechspecs.php). It's supposed to come in at between $300 and $400.

[Edited]

[ThomPete → david927]

300 seems rather high for kids toy. I am thinking it probably would have to break the sub $100 barrier.

But then again everything have to start somewhere.

Any reason you went with the 1024*600 px format?

[david927 → ThomPete]

My daughter has a Winnie-The-Pooh laptop which is tough plastic, has a dozen games and cost, I think, $60.

If you want a large (e.g. 10 inch) touch-screen general purpose device, it's going to break $200 in costs. Even basic components would be really tough to get much cheaper.