These days, it’s common to give even very young children a mobile device loaded up with educational software that aims to improve everything from basic motor skills to reading and arithmetic. But even the cheapest phone or tablet isn’t the kind of thing most parents would like to see get destroyed, and there’s always a concern about giving children a device that’s capable of connecting to the Internet.
Which is where Braino! from [Ankush Pandit] comes in. This suite of applications can be easily flashed to a common Cheap Yellow Display to turn it into a legitimate educational tool. Combined with a 3D printed case, the total cost of the build is low enough that you don’t have to feel bad about handing it off to even the roughest of youngsters.
[Ankush] makes it clear that this project isn’t trying to sell you anything. You’re responsible for picking up a compatible CYD and installing Braino via the web flashing application. The software is released under the GPLv3 license, and it contains no ads, user accounts, or cloud connectivity. We know not everyone is thrilled with how much time young kids spend staring at screens these days, but opinions on modern parenting aside, it’s hard to find fault with the way things have been implemented here.
When the parent sets up Braino they can pick which of the 40 games can be accessed, allowing the experience to be tailored to the individual child’s age and ability. Should you decide to enable Bluetooth, some of the games even support wireless multiplayer between devices.
The commonality of the Cheap Yellow Display is one of its best features, and Braino does an excellent job of showing why that’s so important. Trying to develop a project like this without a standardized platform of some type would be a non-starter, but when anyone can get a CYD sent to their house from Amazon and flash it right from the browser, it’s makes the whole thing far more accessible.
I think something got cut off in the 4th paragraph – the sentence “We also like the beacon function which lets” seems incomplete.
RE: “you don’t have to feel bad about handing it off to even the roughest of youngsters.”
This reminds me of my childhood and how, even from an extremely young age, how precious every toy or gadget was, since if I broke it, I either no longer had it or had to fix it myself, since I either bought it myself or it was one of the very few gifts my parents gave me (only on birthdays or at Christmas). Not to be an old man yelling at the sky, but parents who just buy crap for their kids are teaching them bad lessons about where things come from and what it means to take care of something.
For parents who want to thread the needle between neglect (what my childhood probably was) and spoilage, how about a device with an accelerometer in it that automatically ceases to function for a set period of time or until certain actions that emulate “care” are taken? That might teach a bratty kid not to immediately throw their iPad into the toilet and start crying for a replacement.
Like a meta-Tamagotchi.
i think at the age of two, i famously tossed my father’s pocket watch into the water tank of a humidifier, since i had yet to learn the value of things. later at the age of four i found that no-longer-working pocket watch while nosing around through my parents’ stuff and secretly took it apart because that is in my nature. at that point my father had already grieved the loss of his watch, so there were no further repercussions, though i think i kept that disassembled watch hidden for months.
also during this time, me and my little friend Jenny Mothershead (unfindable on social media!) would go into the one remaining block of forest behind our suburban house and pluck springs out of a typewriter we’d found back there.
I adored an AMT U.S.S. Enterprise from the original series (TOS)….I made the mistake of not leaving it at home during a visit to my maternal grandmother’s place—a mean cousin broke it after they crawled my backside into letting him play with it. Shattered to bits.
I learned not to trust anyone that day—not even family.
A toy car I couldn’t care less about—but that model was more than a toy to me—it represented all that wasn’t Alabama…no tales of picking cotton..a future free of Hee Haw.
I am color blind, but electronics daunted me anyway.
Little kid me would have refused even something as simple as this—let alone something like the new, Wand Company Tricorder replica.
I would have preferred an inert model, or the even cheaper utility belt version that was less accurate.
I knew I was a jinx before first grade—let alone after an old, 80’s vintage Ford gave me mystery electrical problems while working perfectly for my Dad, mechanics, etc.
But why on earth would they use the name Braino?
That’s from the League of Super Hero Rejects along with The Incredible Bulk and Somewhat-Stronger-Than-Average-Man.
Braino! The World’s Smartest Moron:
“Na’ square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the other….George Washington”
Having few toys was a blessing, developed my imagination in unimaginable ways !
Just image how blessed cavemen were 10’s of thousand years ago. Life was wonderful back then. I remember when one of the stone age dads that told his kid not to fool around with those pebbles, because back in the day he had no pebbles to play with either. I clearly remember him saying: “GRMMMBLBLAAWER… ARGHH” which comes down to: “Those pebbles ruin your imagination, throw them away”. Somehow the little kid did not feel happy about this “blessing”.
i love my gizmos and gadgets, and enjoy customizing them to work exactly the way i want them to or building fantastic new things out of stuff i buy on eBay. but i also like to stack stones to make stone walls or arrange them into paths or causeways. the other day i was looking for a specific shape of prism among the rocks at the bottom of a cliff and it occurred to me that i would’ve been perfectly happy had i been born in the stone age.
That’s nice, but why not just have an Android application compatible with old Android as an alternative to the firmware?
I checked their site and cheapest recommended screen was $16 and checking a (in)famous 2nd hand electronics store I can find in stock a (crappy) old Android phone for less (e.g. Samsung Galaxy Fame, Motorola Moto G). That’s before you even throw in the recommended battery ($9), case, speaker, and of course ESP32.
My point is if you really want something dirt cheap that you don’t mind breaking, a crappy old Android phone is cheaper.
I suppose what you can do with the Braino is make the whole project educative, i.e. give your kid a $30 budget, let them build the bill of material, and make it a project to build it with mommy/daddy help.
Where are you finding “old Android phones” at 2nd hand stores? Around here (California) there are none as they are typically bricked or locked, therefore useless.
You can always flash LineageOS or
PostmarketOSNura on it…“and of course ESP32”
The ESP32 is already in the screen, that’s the whole point of the CYD.
Because you can pick up a CYD for $5 if you hunt around
What is the point? Maybe I’m too jaded but i don’t see too many people sitting down to write applications for a niche device for children (aka individuals with 0 spending ability).
Just hand them a smartphone, at least they’ll be entertained. Might get into programming and electronics too (at least that’s how i got into them, by having unrestricted access to internet)
Claude code or one of the others will make exactly what you want on these devices, just start in an empty directory, plug in the device and tell it what you want.
@mod: report for advertising (where’s f*cking button?)
Find us a source of $5 – $10 smartphones
from the projects AGENTS.md:
“No AI attribution in commits, ever — and no AI in the names either. Do not add Co-Authored-By: Claude, Co-Authored-By: , “Generated with…” footers, or any other trailer or sign-off naming an AI tool or model. The repository’s history records the author, and that is a human.”
hackaday should not boost AI slop projects that explicitly gaslight the reader. that’s a really bad look.
Slop means bad quality; we are way beyond that point, provided you use the right models.
Okok, got it, you’re not a shill but only a fan. Still, tone it down.
And no, we aren’t sadly.
Isn’t this kind of mis-attribution even illegal?
Impressive project, $15 USD hardware and free software. Unknown if young children will be attracted often enough and long enough to describe this as an education device, but hopefully it will satisfy that role; if not, it can easily be repurposed into a any of the CYD projects.
I was teaching a class of high school kids as a volunteer and I made a web app so they could vote on different outcomes and play educational various games. For instance, they would submit answers to questions and then pick an answer. You would get points if you got it right or if fooled someone else etc. Points were arbitrary and there wasn’t a winner. But I was surprised how many didn’t have a smart phone or didn’t have the web browser available. So I started working on an esp32 based device that could work for this but didn’t finish before the semester was over.
This looks awesome and I’m excited to see networking (esp-now mesh) learning games as well.