Dash with his ball launcher.
My son loves robots. As I mentioned earlier, he was able to build a robot to help in my husband’s photography business. The RCVTR is still in service and is working beautifully. A six-year old already building robots and solving problems while pocketing a little cash is pretty awesome. But today I want to talk about Dash.
My son loves to get on Amazon and search for toys. One day he came across Dash. We found the little robot on Youtube and really got excited about this thing. The best part was he wanted it bad enough to purchase it himself.
We made a map to show his progress of how much money he had and how much he needed. He worked jobs around our house and for his grandparents and earned every dollar he needed to buy this robot.
Dash is app driven. We were able to use an old iphone we no longer needed for him to play with Dash. This was perfect.
There are 4 Dash apps: Blockly, Path, Wonder, and Go. My son’s favorite one to use is Wonder. Mine is Blockly, and yes even moms want to play with this thing.
Blockly requires you to “code” Dash to do things. With Wonder my son has figured out how to program Dash to say things he wants. Dash has voice recordings of all four of us saying something.
Dash and the app communicate via bluetooth. We can record our voice in a soundtrack with the app and then the sound will actually come from Dash. It blew all our minds and watching Dash respond to quickly and easily.
Dash has been a fun robot. On one app it teaches you how to do more with Dash…. you “train” him to do more things by completing tasks. If you can get it to roll forward and turn right then you will eventually be tasked with getting him to going forward, turning 90* right, saying the soundtrack on number 3, blinking with all red lights and finally mooing like a cow. It is great and grows more complex with each instruction. Teaching kids programing through play, according to the makers, Wonder Workshop.
We got Dash and almost immediately my husband and I had to purchase the ball launcher. It is an extra piece on the back of it that allows him to launch three balls at his target. It was a hit and continues to be.
Some of my recommendations:
The iphone app is great and I am thankful it works with it. But it would all be tons more fun with a larger screen. It can be a challenge to drag some of the commands into the correct order when you feel like you are fat thumbing everything on the screen with every touch. I think the apps were more designed for use with the iPad. Again, it works on the iphone, but by the time my son hits the wrong thing the 5th time he quickly loses interest. This is only a problem on a couple of the apps, so it wouldn’t deter me from making the purchase.
I asked my son to help me by telling me all about Dash.
“it has three balls on the bottom, and a ball on the top that is his eye ball. He has wheels on the bottom. You need a phone with a special app. then you can buy a launcher with a separate set and shoot little balls. He is $150. He has a sensor that looks out and sees if there is any obstacles. He has an option panel that pops up and ask if you can him to push it over or stop.”
There are several other optional add-on items you can purchase to work on Dash, but we have have only used the ball launcher. Dash works fine and is fun without any add-ons, they are just a little icing on the cake.
If you aren’t sure if Dash is for you, there is a smaller, less expensive version called Dot. If any of you have Dot I would love to hear some feedback about him.
Next week I will be skipping over to a travel post, talking about getting ready for an international flight. The following week I will wrap up my robot series and tell you about our snap circuit robot. Be sure you don’t miss any of my upcoming posts by subscribing. As a thank you for subscribing I will send you my ebook, Flying with Kids for free.
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