Make, learn, and play with our new Screen Kit
Did you know that, for every person on Earth, one square foot of LCD panel is milled and sold every year?
But what happens beneath the pixels? What if anyone, anywhere, could build their own affordable HD screen?
Computing should be as simple to create as it is to consume. Three years ago, this big dream started with a challenge from a small six-year-old, Micah – he asked us to create “a computer I can make myself, as simple and fun as LEGO, so no one teaches me.”
Today we complete the computer kit. Our worldwide tribe demanded a display. We had a choice: push them towards a pricy option – or work on a new piece of “anyone can make” magic, in time for the holidays.
We chose the latter, to demystify another layer of the tech we all take for granted. Today we’re shipping our build-your-own HD Screen Kit, for $129 / £109 / €129 through the holidays.
You can get yours here. It’s the most affordable, portable, creative HD display in the world – and you build it yourself.
(Help us get the word out.)
Guided by a storybook, anyone, as young as six, can connect a driver board, LCD panel, programmable buttons, a base and stand, plug-and-play cables, stickers, velcro, and custom cards together – learning as you go. Read the book here.
Out pops a magnifying glass to look closely at each part and pixel. The build-your-own buttons let you to tweak alpha, gamma, and more, and learn what billions of liquid crystals can really do. To make it yours, we added stickers to peel and place on and around your Screen.
At the end, you’ve got a portable, playful display – your Kano Kit and Keyboard clip in the back, with room for spare cables or a battery pack. The 10.1” Gorilla Glass precision-moulded piece is the world’s most affordable all-in-one screen – it plugs into any HDMI-device, so it’s perfect for makers, photographers, artists, and creators of all stripes. Oh, and it’s viewable from two angles, or on your lap.
And soon, we’ll unveil an incredible offer around the Kano Complete, just for our first 100 buyers on Black Friday. More details on the door buster soon.
The Screen Kit isn’t all we’ve been up to this year. Our new Powerup Kit lets you transform any Raspberry Pi 1 into a lightshow, and comes with a 6x faster Raspberry Pi 2, and a special Make Light creative coding app. It’s $89 / £69, and lets you make arcade games, alarm clocks, status lights, and more.
We’ve also souped up the Kano Kit. You’ll get an open, playful computer kit that teaches you as you go – along with hundreds more creative coding challenges. We’ve powered up our PC with a programmable orb of dazzling LEDs. You can link them to music and data, following simple, storybook steps.
You’ve helped us get so far, in less time than it takes to grow a poplar. You helped our first computer and coding kit explode on Kickstarter, and made it one of the most crowdfunded learning inventions ever – with the mojo of Steve Wozniak, Yancey Strickler, and backers in 86 countries. A year later, over 50,000 have built their first computer, and coded artworks, games, songs, servers, radios, and more. In our online World, kids of all ages have shared over 9 million lines of creative code, a carnival of the computer arts.
Once again, for the Screen Kit, we teamed up on our industrial design with MAP, an incredible and noble crew of makers and artists who we’ve partnered with since the beginning. Here’s a taste of the iteration...
Kano turns learning to code into a game with drag and drop physical pieces and digital blocks, that let you remix real devices, apps and games you love – like Minecraft, Whatsapp, Pong, and more. We’re growing into a complete creative computing system. Kids in Sierra Leone have built radio stations with Kano, in Oklahoma, time-lapse cameras, in Kosovo, solar arrays, and around the world, playful open-source consoles that let you look inside a computer’s brain – rather than just use it.
We’re awed by these creator stories, and now with the release of Screen Kit, we look forward to more mainstream making as our community grows. Thanks for being with us.
GET A SCREEN KIT or a DISCOUNT BUNDLE: kano.me/screen
FUN FACT: Did you know that, before screens, computers talked to each other with punchcards – and now, they do it by sending millions of numbers, sixty times a second, down a special coiled cable?
WATCH THIS: How to make a computer
MORE ASSETS AND STORIES: Kano press pack
WHAT’S INSIDE – SCREEN KIT
10.1” LCD screen, 1280 x 800, 720p (scales to 1080p), 150 PP, $129 through the holidays
The Screen Book, a story with simple steps so anyone can build and understand their own powerful display
Mini-USB Y-splitter cable (power)
Works with the Kano Kit or any HDMI-compatible device
WHAT’S INSIDE – KANO COMPUTER KIT
A computer and coding kit for all ages, powered by Raspberry Pi 2, -
Two illustrated storybooks: “Make a computer” and “Code powers”
Build-your-own speaker, case-mounted and powered by GPIO
Flat cables, colour coded for easy use
Customizable case slide cards for top and bottom of case
Modular side slotting case with clamshell clip
Nano Wi-Fi dongle with seamless auto-configuration
8GB SDHC Class 10 memory card with Kano OS
New wireless keyboard with multi-touch trackpad
Ultra high-quality, region-customizable USB power supply
