You may not be able to get into Hogwarts (muggles that we all are), but that doesn’t mean that you can’t build your own wand. After all, who needs Ollivander and his wands when you have the new Harry Potter Kano Coding Kit? Heralded as the first-ever Harry Potter STEM project, this coding kit is the latest offering from runaway hit Kano, who first burst onto the coding scene via Kickstarter. By the end of 2017, it had shipped more than 200,000 of its original Raspberry Pi coding kits, and had also raised nearly $30 million. It’s now building upon that success by bringing to life one of the most popular mystical worlds of our (and previous and subsequent) generations.
The new Kano kit gives kids and adults alike the opportunity to build their own wands, and also comes with more than 70 magic-inspired coding challenges. The wand works by way of software and a companion app, which capture your movements and turn them into convincing effects. You can make snakes slither, toads turn into … not toads, set fires, and more. By carefully following the instructions of the coding manual, you’ll not only build a wand, but also learn about hardware by way of sensors, data, and of course, code.
As for the wand itself, it makes use of a gyroscope, accelerometer, and magnetometer in order to keep tabs on its location and speed in space, which means it’s able to track your hand motion. Just like magic (or like computer science), the sensors will land a cursor on screen to reflect where you’re pointing, and also recognize what’s happening when you swish and flick to some signature spells.
“We’re surrounded by technology in our homes, workplaces and pockets, yet only a small percent of people, less than 1 percent of 1 percent, understand the happenings behind the screen,” said Alex Klein, Co-Founder and CEO of Kano. “We are thrilled to partner with Warner Bros Consumer Products to inspire people of all ages, all over the world to make their own code, and see how easy it can be to understand, play, and create with it.”
The Harry Potter Coding Kit is Kano first offering to be created with tablets in mind, and works with both Apple and Android devices, as well as Windows and Mac computers. The Harry Potter Kano Coding Kit is available for now available for pre-order from the Kano website, and will set you back $100. The kit will go on sale around the world online beginning October 1, 2018, and will also be made available in retail stores in the United States, Canada, the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand.
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