Hi,
am thinking of buying a Thymio II for my 9 year-old son for Christmas (and am also thinking of suggesting setting up a robotics club using Thymios to his primary school teacher!). I see that the Wireless Thymio has recently been developed and should be shipping to crowdsource supporters "real soon", but there seems to be no mention of it on the mobsya.org website. Can you give an estimate for when Wireless Thymio will be on sale and also how much will it cost in CHF (to be able to compare with the current pricing for Thymio II)? I'm tempted by the Halloween special offer too of the Lego pieces but I'm guessing that won't apply even if Wireless Thymio goes on sale before the middle of November?
Thanks for all the brilliant work you guys do to enable teaching of technology and programming to children.
Best wishes,
charles
Hi,
I am Christophe Barraud, president of Mobsya. I will try to answer some of your questions!
Concerning the Wireless Thymio, we indeed did a crowdfunding this summer and we should deliver the first ones between November and December. We are now at the end of the process of certification but it goes more slowly than expected. We cannot give you a precise release date yet but it will come in the following months. If it's for Christmas, I cannot guarantee that the Wireless Thymio will reach the Christmas tree at 100%. We will first deliver Wireless Thymio to the persons who participated in the crowdfunding, after that I cannot give any guarantees.
Concerning the price, it's also in discussion, especially because we want to wait the end of the certification process to decide a definite price.
We will give news as soon as we get it, follow Thymio on twitter to get the most fresh news (either directly @ThymioII or through this page)
And Mobsya does special offers for schools, just go here and ask for a special quote (at the bottom)
Best
Hi Christophe,
thanks for your full and frank response. I understand your position and can appreciate why you can't give any firm estimates. Overall it does sound a bit unlikely that Wireless Thymio will be ready in time for loading into Fr Christmas' sleigh which is a bit of shame. Still, you do seem to have a way of retrofitting the wireless chip into a Thymio II, albeit with a bit of soldering required.
Regarding the primary school: I have a feeling it may take a little time to persuade them to launch such a programme but I for one think your work is compelling - with our own personal Thymio II for doing a demonstration I may well manage to convince them to include it as an extra-curricula activity.
Thanks again, "bon courage" for getting the certification process completed and keep up the good work.
Best wishes to all the team,
charles
Hi again
We will indeed distribute upgrade kits as they were proposed for the crowdfunding once we get them. It will be then possible to make your Thymio a Wireless one.
Concerning schools, there is already a lot of material created by teachers or Research centers, mainly in French however. Go have a look on the School section of the wiki.
Thanks for the encouragement, we will keep you inform of the latest news as we get them!
Best
Christophe
I imagine Price[Thymio II + upgrade kit] > Price[Wireless Thymio] but since Santa probably won't be able to wait we'll have to go that route anyway.
Thanks for the pointer regarding resources for schools. I'm English but we live in France and I can speak French well enough… and obviously for the school teachers here it's a distinct advantage for the materials to be in French! :->
Merci encore.
charles
I think that this law "Price[Thymio II + upgrade kit] > Price[Wireless Thymio]" will probably be right ;) but again, I can't confirm you anything yet.
We just had the news that the certification passed with success! So we will be able to give news about that pretty soon!
Stay connected.
À bientôt.
Hello again,
in the end I decided to tell Father Christmas that we'd just be patient and wait for Thymio's enhanced new sibling. A bit disappointing for one young person, but it seems to make sense to hold off and get the more capable wireless version. Talking of which, how is the roll-out going and can you give an estimate now of the likely delay until it's generally available? …and pricing??
Many thanks and wishing a Joyeux Noël à vous et toute l'équipe chez Mobsya !
charles
Dear Charles,
I hope you could finally buy your robot! Wireless Thymio has been on sale for a bit more than a year. you can find it on http://www.mobsya.org