This month, we created our website, worked on a variety of improvements based on parent feedback, released two new games, and began exploring how to keep Andrometrons affordable despite skyrocketing component prices.
New Website
Perhaps a little meta, as you’re probably reading this on our new website, but we have a website now: andrometron.com!
It’s still in progress, but it has sections for all of the games, information about what an Andrometron is, and this lovely blog.
Shipping Success!
Last month we sent our first industrious Andrometron through the mail, and we are happy to report that it survived its trip!
Tidy Time
We released an initial version of our first two-player collaborative game designed for children with younger siblings who want in on the action. The younger child is responsible for pressing the space bar to open the hamper (or close it if they’re feeling mischievious). The older child uses the mouse to tidy up the clothes by putting them in the hamper. It only works if the hamper is open though, giving the younger sibling the power to give and the power to taketh away.
Mice Are Confusing
We now have a 3-year-old Andrometron user and received fantastic feedback about what it’s been like both for him and his parents. The first piece of feedback confirmed that computer mice are confusing when all you’ve seen are touch screens. We’ve created a new game called Wand where the only interaction needed is moving the mouse. The child controls a magic wand that emits sparkles, and if a sparkle lands on a plant, the plant grows. This will help associate mouse movement with on-screen movement.
If you have an Andrometron, a beta version of Wand should be on your computer now.
Games
The Art game would previously get slower the more children drew in a single drawing. Now, it’s optimized to handle as many pen strokes or stamps as they want.
The Tap and Food games would sometimes have their animals off the screen when they started. This should be fixed now, and the animals should always appear on screen.
We are currently working on a cow herding simulator, and are beginning work on our first number related games.
Auction Results
I am so grateful to everyone who bid on the Andrometron at the preschool auction. I never expected there to be 10 bids! Your supportive words are so encouraging. Thank you!
RAM, OMG!
So, you may have heard of this new AI thing. It turns out, that it’s driving RAM (and hard drive) prices through the roof. Here’s a graph of RAM prices from October 2024 through today from our friends at PCPartPicker where you can see that RAM has gone from roughly $75 to almost $275 in the last year and a half.
SSDs (the Hard Drives we use in Andrometrons) have also doubled in price over the same time period. With these two things combined, the component cost of the computer part of an Andrometron has become unaffordable unless we sell Andrometrons for $1000 which is, how should we say, a little high. Unless we decide to go full Veblen. (We’re not.)
To address this, we’re exploring custom designing the computer internals and switching to an ARM-based processor. This would allow us to only pay for exactly the components and connectors we need for our device, and only the amounts that we want. More updates here as we have them.
Next Time
Tune in next month for information about new games, and more manufacturing excitement!
As always, if you would like an Andrometron, please just respond to this email and let me know.