IdentiToy Interactive Brick Baseplate
© 2015 IdentiToy
This is a $10 clear plastic base that sits on top of your tablet, to use with "your favorite building toys", like LEGOs (with 8 mm studs). Images generated on the tablet screen shine through the baseplate and form a background landscape. You can then augment the image with sounds. The app allows custom landscapes to be built with one stud (8mm) spacing or two stud (16mm) spacing tile images. For example, to create a beach scene, you can place toy brick palm trees, beach huts and toy brick figures in beach apparel on the baseplate. The background scene is created with the app using images such as water or sand and foreground images such as fish. You can then add the sound of waves crashing on the beach. See also IdentiBricks that use small RFID “Pills” (about the size of a grain of rice) to allow the position and orientation of any object placed on the screen to be tracked. These inexpensive Pills are similar to those used currently for pet identification. For an interesting overview of the technology, see http://www.identitoy.com/technology.html.
$10, iPad, Android (note: will not work on the iPad Mini or irregular size screens)
Teaches: creativity, logic, building