InventrReviews of inventr.io

Purchased the 30 days lost in space kit to work through with my 11yo daughter over a summer. We didn't want to rush through 30 days - only working 2-3 days a week, but we finished it just past the summer session and she had a lot of fun with it. The videos are not bad - all the code is pretty much given so I had to act as a teacher to my daughter. Do not expect this to be an intro to programming, or even an intro to hardware/electronics. The videos do talk about the different hardware units that get introduced, but not in very heavy details, which is probably good to keep the attention of a young mind. I would say it is a great parent-child learn together type of kit, and we definitely enjoyed it enough to start building new projects with the kit AFTER we finished the program.

I absolutely love the concept of this kit. The idea of a physical kit where the learner plays a role in a story, and learns and builds things along the way is absolutely brilliant to me. Electronics and education have long been a passion area for me, and I've done a lot of thinking and learning about producing educational video content. That said, the videos incorporate some great ideas. They use a mix of live-recorded video (from a couple of useful angles, like both the instructor's face, and a document cam view of the hardware on his desk, plus graphics and screen capture of the instructor's computer. They put together these elements in such a way that you can always see what's appropriate at that time for illustrative purposes, and always among space ship theming elements. In that regard, the developers of the kit have executed on many of the things that I feel are important in educational videos. However, the actual presentation itself leaves much to be desired. The audio sounds like it was recorded from the built-in mic on a laptop, in a small untreated office. He speaks in a a monotone voice, and he's looking away from the camera most of the time to read his script, which I feel tries to teach beginner concepts using intermediate vocabulary, and sometimes uses vague and wandering descriptions of concepts. That might have worked alright during a beta rollout, but for final product release, I feel like hiring an actor and having someone more versed in presentation review the script, would have taken an okay product and made it great.

Got the package today. It was well packed, the box was smaller than I expected. It was very difficult to cram it all back in again. Opened the packages and everything looked good except the I/O sockets on the Hero board were not well aligned. That might be an issue later if I need to use a shield on it. The real test will be the lessons.

I have yet to use the Hero board but my experience with this company has been noteworthy. I made a mistake in ordering my Hero and altho the address was correct, the name on the package was not. MY FAULT TOTALLY. The post office sent the package back. I contacted customer service, they were quick to respond to my emails and re-shipped the package back to me in an expedient manner. Kudos!! to their customer service. Now, on to the adventure of building and programming.

I have experience Arduino and basically wanted to see what was different about the Hero offering from this company. So I ordered a sample board and worked with the lessons. Company itself, shipped it quick and answered questions. The product is good. it works with standard Arduino libs and looks like an Uno. The benefit this company brings is their lessons and training which seem to be very well thought out, organized, and especially easy to access.

My engineering club has been working on this project and they really like it! Super fun!!i

This company is great! I ordered the "30 days lost in space" kit and it was amazing! 5/5 would recommend!

Great introduction to the Arduino processor world - maybe a little 'basic' in the first few lessons but builds to more complex and practical uses of this powerful little platform - exposure to lots of extra material via links to library functions and the Open Source Arduino community. Good Stuff!!