Very fun to build, highly customizable and good for both beginner plug n play options. I enjoyed taking the old Fisher Price music box record player apart and turning it into an NFC based record player.
Lots of other great examples in the yearly showcase threads
My kids (2,4yo) have one each. They were recommended by a friend who has one for their child. Honestly one of the best pieces of tech I've used in a while.
The app is thoughfully made with exactly the sort of features you'd want (alarms, separate volume limits for day/night, night light with changeable colours, morning alarm, bed/wake colours so the kids know when they should be asleep/awake; though my kids don't pay any attention to it, etc). Once you've scanned a card you own, you can activate it from your mobile app so when you're travelling you don't have to take all of the cards with you and risk losing them (though you do need to have WiFi for the Yoto to control it that way; I use my phone hotspot when we're places with no WiFi).
They also have a couple of radio stations, fun educational one which is different every day, like a radio station, and a music one, which switches to bedtime music after bed time and plays curated bedtime lullabies and the sort of things you'd expect for sleep music for children.
There's loads of educational cards (my 4yo loves the "adventures" series with "missy" where they explore different things about the world; under the sea, space, rainforests, etc), there's stories, and there's music, there's also a decent second-hand marketplace around here on Gumtree where people sell the cards their children have grown out of, though they do hold much of their value.
The ability to record your own cards is also a huge win; they give you (I believe) 500MB of storage for each card you buy (at ~£2 each), and you can record your own readings of things, or upload mp3s (we've made some Yoto music cards for CDs we own but they don't make cards for).
We take them with us when we travel, but intend to buy the Yoto Minis which are much more portable for that purpose.
I like that you can get other people (i.e. grandparents) to join your yoto "family" and have them record things via the app and it transfers to your card.
Cool, thanks. The nice thing about the Pi one is that it (used to, at least) support Spotify and various streaming services. After a quick look I can't see that feature on those microcontroller versions.
My daughter (almost 2) loves her Yoto and brings it everywhere. The NFC card to play music means she can (and has) put peanut butter in the card slot and it doesn't matter.
> Less directly was Tonies, an audio player for kids that uses NFC on Skyrim style figures to trigger stories.
My youngest, at 16, still loves the Tonie Box. She uploads random stuff to their web portal and plays it quietly at night. Her sister, in the top bunk, had a string / pulley connected to the figurine so that she could restart the music from her bed by lifting it just a little bit and putting it back down.
Reminded me of Yoto, an internet radio style thing for kids that uses little NFC cards.
https://us.yotoplay.com/
Techmoan reviewed it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mQECKOkkqk
Less directly was Tonies, an audio player for kids that uses NFC on Skyrim style figures to trigger stories.
https://us.tonies.com/
Techmoan did a video on that too (it’s how I know about both): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9RbMMJRxzw