About this project
The Camera, Speaker, & Pixel Kit: physical computing for all
$643,030
2,399
What’s Kano?
Computer and coding kits – for all ages, all over the world. Simple, fun, and for everyone. Built and loved in 86 countries (so far.)
"These kits possess the potential to unshackle us from the past and usher in a new world of computing" – Fast Company, Most Innovative Companies of 2015
Now, we've combined three DIY devices with simple, visual code that anyone can learn.
You can be the first to get all three kits for $249. Just hit the back button. (Or get any one for $99 – each has a powerful wireless computer inside.)
And Kano Code, the simplest way to start programming, is in alpha, free and open-source. (Try making photos, music, lights, and data before you buy.)
Camera Kit – the world's first codeable camera
- Make a five megapixel camera with a step-by-step storybook. Learn light and focus.
- Code your own photo filters, colorful flashes and clever rules.
- Add the Tripwire Sensor – trigger snaps, track your cat. ↓ More
Pixel Kit – Build a dazzling lightboard, code live data
- Learn to code lights, games, and art in millions of colors
- Demystify data – visualize sound, stocks, sports scores, and more.
- Add the Tilt Sensor and make it react to movement. ↓ More
- Ships for the holidays!
Speaker Kit – A smart synth you make yourself
- Learn the science of sound as you plug the pieces.
- Make your own instrument. Code loops, melodies, and a DIY drumpad.
- Add the Gesture Sensor to bend sound, make a theremin or turntable, control music. ↓ More
Kickstarter-only offer..
Triple Pack ($249 Early Bird) – Get all three kits in their first-ever productions. Mix and match computers, code, and sensors.
Learn how the world works. Make it do something new. (30% MRSP discount – kits start shipping January 2017.)
Make and play, with simple code
The kits are standalone – connect them wirelessly, to any web browser. Then, with playful challenges, level up slowly, flash lights, take pictures, make some noise. You can now program live, side-by-side, with instant results. ↓ More
What do people think?
(As reported in WIRED, Engadget, The Verge, Quartz, Fast Company, VentureBeat, CNET, TechCrunch, and Bloomberg.)
Camera Kit
Make a powerful 5MP camera. Snap shots, save videos. Create your own filters, flashes, and clever rules. Learn about light, focus and photography, then how to control them yourself.
How do I make a camera?
Step by step, page by page, the storybook shows you how. Plug the parts, connect the circuits to a single-board computer brain. Add a flash, trigger, battery. Choose a lens – wide-angle, fisheye, or macro.
Add the Tripwire Sensor – Each kit comes with its own universal sensor you can mix and match. The Camera Kit has a Tripwire Sensor: an infrared beam, with full-room range. Trigger snaps, track your cat.
How do I code it?
With step-by-step challenges Kano Code shows you how. Start simple. Drag a block. Make it flash. Next, change the timer. Now take a picture every second. Or when you clap your hands.
Build apps to make your camera truly yours. Then zap each app to your camera, and take them with you.
What can I do with it?
Thousands of projects made by us and a global Kano World community. Capture the perfect moment...
Insta-what? Code your own filters...
Customize and time the ring flash...
And more...
Pixel Kit
Anyone can make and code vivid pixels. Bring sound, data, stocks, scores, weather, games, art, animations and more to life – in 1.67 million glorious colours.
How do I make a pixel grid?
Build the beautiful board yourself, like Lego. Attach the buttons an joystick. Add the battery, clip together the custom case. Learn about diodes, frame-rates, and color.
Add the Tilt Sensor – Each kit comes with it's own universal sensor. Master 3D space and acceleration. Control light and games with movement.
How do I code it?
Learn through online challenges in Kano Code. Drag in a block, light it up, live. (Immediacy, instant "whoa.") Next, learn its logic, make it sparkle. Use Kano Code to draw pixel art, and you can make a cartoon, frame by frame.
What can I do with it?
It's a wireless window into the internet – put it anywhere. Visualize live data...
Code clever cartoons...
Make lights dance to music...
Remix Marian Hill Visualizer (first coded by the artist) →
And more...
Speaker Kit
Build a smart Bluetooth speaker and synthesizer. Stream music, loop beats, disguise your voice, make walkie talkies. Learn and code electronic music on an instrument that's all your own.
How do I make a speaker?
With a simple book, build your own speaker, learn how it works. Connect the board, add the speaker cone – feel the magnet. Clip a boom tube, knobs and dials – to bring the bass.
Code a drumpad – pick the regions, program the sounds, tap out a beat
Add the Gesture Sensor – Sense proximity, direction, and distance. Harness the power of your hand to change volume, switch tracks, distort recordings, or create your own sounds.
How do I code sounds and music?
Step by step challenges guide you. Code loop pedals, alarm clocks, theremins, doorbells and more. Gain mastery, create electronic music, sonic algorithms. Then zap that code to your speaker, and take it with you.
Make waves...
Craft an instrument...
Disguise and distort...
And more...
Do they work together?
Oh yes. Combine kits, swap sensors, mix and match however your like, to create useful tools and fun projects. Kano Code is the glue.
The simplest way to start coding
Each kit has a tiny single-board computer inside. You put it together yourself, with simple steps. Then, it spins up its own wireless network, which connects to Kano Code – our step-by-step code learning system that runs in any browser. (We take care of the geeky stuff.)
Kano Code is based on our decades combined experience breaking down complex tech around the world. You can try it now. We use simple steps, storytelling, game mechanics, and practical projects. It starts with blocks, but levels you up to real typed text.
Beginners learn real coding skills. Advanced makers can fluidly control real hardware.
Try coding photos, sound, and data →
1. Start simple – Begin with simple, friendly challenges. Powerful drag and drop code blocks control your kits with instant results. Try things out. Break, hack and invent.
2. Move onto real code – Syntax highlighted, autocomplete text is a language both you and your computer "get". It's human readable, but based in real Javascript.
3. Get rewarded – With deep game design, level up, unlock new blocks, syntax, badges, more challenges and content. Brings out your competitive streak. Climb the leaderboards.
4. Be inspired – Kano World is a cool community full of amazing creations, digital and physical, made by people of all ages and skill levels. Kano Code breaks these down into step-by-step tutorials for you to follow.
5. Take apps with you – Zap up to three apps at a time to any of your kits. We've found that a real, powerful object, under your command, is the sweetest reward for hours spent logic wrangling.
Who’s it for?
Kano is for the curious – for anyone who wants to create technology, not just consume it.
We've spent many frequent flier miles watching people world-over take their first steps into creative computing. We've seen that, with physical-digital stories and powerful projects, computational confidence emerges. You fall into flow, and real skills follow.
Comfortable with code? You'll be happy to know that Kano Code is designed to scale to advanced makers, with open-source technologies, and the latest Polymer framework. Indeed, we could use your help with a few things...
Our first kit, around the world
Our youngest computer maker has been 4, and our oldest, 81. As long as you can read, you can start. (Our community has translated our books into over 70 languages so far.)
Since we first bundled and box of bits and a book, and took it overseas, we've seen a new creative generation rising. Algorithms control our day-to-day – they don't have to be invisible, made by just a few.
It began with a little cousin, Micah, who asked for “a computer I can make myself." He had two conditions: "no one teaches me – it has to be as simple and fun as Lego”. It resonated wherever we went.
What's in the boxes?
Our favorite pledges
We'd love to send you these rewards for backing us. More on the right – plus classroom and non-profit pledges, in partnership with great charities and the Kano Academy.
Complements the Computer Kit
Our new Computer Kit is now ten times faster than the version first launched here three years ago. It’s a powerful PC, with a playful OS, with hundreds of fun projects. Hack Minecraft, code art and music, learn the command line through narrative adventure, launch thousands of open-source apps, browse the web (with parental filters), and feel a sense of ownership.
The Computer Kit works perfectly with the new Camera, Speaker and Pixel Kits. Become a Kano Master and get all four.
Who is Kano?
We’ve been building a new kind of computer company in the pretty-East London for four years. We reside in the hollowed-out first floor of an old department store (as well as a small office in Shenzhen). We’ve successfully shipped over 30 productions of three different creative, code-powered kits to 86 countries.
Our 20-nationality collective believes in big things, but small details. For three years, we’ve looked and listened, with hundreds of thousands of kids, artists, educators, preachers, teachers around the world.
Why come back to Kickstarter?
The spirit of this community is the spirit of the new kind of computing that’s needed.
- Multidisciplinary
- Middleman-suspicious
- Pluralist
- Populist
- Fairly priced
We’re back, because you backed us three years ago. You wrote your names in our software, made servers, solar stations, robots, and millions of lines of code, all over the world. We want you to be the first to join us (with discounts, natch). We want to thank you, praise you (like we should), and enlist you, to prove that a new kind of computing is needed for a new generation.
Why Kano?
Computers changed everything. They unlocked powers. Then, they got locked up. They were once physical. Now they’re hidden, by shiny sheets of glass, one-size-fits-all.
The first PC revolution was about making it simple for anyone on Earth to use computers. That’s why the next PC revolution must make it simple for anyone on Earth to understand & make computing, not just use it.
We need your help to make it happen.
Thanks for reading,
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Risks and challenges
We're a team with a lot of experience in making things and delivering them – digital products, consumer products and technology execution, with background at places like Skype, Keter, Newsweek, Sony, Memrise, and Red Hat. There are always challenges, but our promise is that we'll rise to meet them with all our might. We'll do everything in our power to leave our backers well looked after, and their rewards on-time or early.
We've given above a conservative estimate of of delivery dates. We are committed to keeping you informed of our progress in the months following the campaign. Our promise to deliver will be challenged at all times by the known complexities of manufacturing, production scheduling, shipping "atoms" between continents, and more.
Therefore, in the event that unexpected issues arise in the delivery schedule, we will do our utmost to minimize the impact on our supporters and dedicate ourselves to providing the best, most honest, experience. Our first 200 got hands-on help, and so will you if you join us.
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Funding period
- (29 days)