Words & Letters - Smart blocks toy

Hi all!

I made a toy/game for small children to help them start learning the alphabet and even write their first words. It uses wooden blocks for the alphabet letters and an HTML5 game to display words and images made with GDevelop.

This is how the smart blocks look like:

And this is how it’s all connected to the PC running the game:

I’m planning to document the project at some point. Will update the forum post when I do. This is actually my second project with GDevelop and the experience was great once again.

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This is great!
It looks like you are using NFC letter blocks, I was looking at a project like this a while ago that was using NFC letters. I have a few, (more like one) idea to go with this. (compound words) “mail” + “box”)

Hi!

I’m actually using RFID, which is some cases it’s easier to work with.
Rfid tags are embedded in the wooden blocks and the base holds the reader.

I always thought that RFID would be too powerful for contact blocks and end up interfering with all the other blocks/letters around, (thus causing readings that you don’t want)
(I just looked it up and…) never realized that the frequency could be modified so that it wouldn’t cause a problem.
Thank you. Good luck.

I’m not sure I get what you mean. The reader is using a pretty small antenna and the passive tags can be read up to 3cm from the reader, when properly aligned. In my case the reading distance is about 1.5cm. Active RFID tags could be an issue causing interference if they are configured to transmit in small intervals. NFC could also be another option.

how did you make that gdevelop knows when you put on a rfid tag and when you connected the reader? and whats on the rfid tag?

Hi N1kko.

The GDevelop receives keystrokes from an small program that runs on the PC and translates serial input into keystrokes. The RFID tags contain a unique ID string that the MCU on the reader device translates into a keystroke that is transmitted to the PC over a USB serial connection.