Author: Jennifer Allen / Source: reviewgeek.com
Much like any conventional language, programming is one of those skills we all wish we’d started learning many years ago. Give your kids a head start with Makeblock‘s Codey Rocky.
The Makeblock Codey Rocky is designed to teach your kids the concepts of programming while playing.
An entry-level coding robot, it’s aimed at children aged 6 and above, and we took it for a spin.As soon as you take him out the box, it’s apparent how cute Codey Rocky is. And yes, I’m calling him a ‘him’. The little dude has too much personality to be an ‘it’. Technically, he’s formed of two separate parts. His ‘face’ is Codey, a detachable controller that does all the hard work, while Rocky is the car that transports him whenever he needs to go. It’s quite a useful design as it means you can just take Codey to hook up to your PC when needed, but still carry Codey and Rocky together.
The Codey unit has plenty of useful gizmos your kids can control. His face is an LED display, demonstrating various expressions in a basic but oddly personality-rich way. There’s a speaker for saying a few select voice lines, along with a light sensor and voice sensor which gives you a few options for more complicated programming tasks later on. Three buttons are also included at the bottom of Codey, which you can program to initiate certain tasks. Everything about Codey is reasonably chunky so kids without fine motor skills can still play with him.
Codey Is a Fun Remote Control Toy Right Out of the Box
Within a few moments of connecting to the smartphone app via Bluetooth, Codey can already do some entertaining things. At first, Codey is a simple remote control toy. Dive into the ‘Drive’ section of the app and you can use an on-screen joystick to move him around, or press one of the many buttons to get him to do something. He can spin, ‘smile’, act ‘angry’, do a little dance, or race for a moment.
You can also design a route for him to follow by drawing a path in the app. It’s simple stuff but quite fun to create your own little obstacle courses. Conveniently, Codey is able to travel across most surfaces, including climbing over small bumps, so you don’t have to worry about being restricted to hardwood floors. I found him just as capable on a thick carpet as he was a flat surface.
Simple Coding Blocks Make Learning How to Code Easy and Fun
You could probably leave it there and have a cute remote…
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