Reverse engineering the Ravensburger TipToi pen
github.com
github.com
Here [1] is the Ravensburger product page in German and here [2] is some toy seller's page.
https://github.com/entropia/tip-toi-reveng/wiki/PEN-Optical-...
TL; DR: the tip of a pen has a sensor, the books have dot patterns overlaid on top of image areas, the patterns are decipherable into (hexa-)decimal code, and with a script file the codes do different actions (set a variable, play an audio file).
There are different models and the newest one has a record feature as well as wifi (for asset downloads, versions before need a download companion app on the PC/mac).
Edit: fix typos
You can get a book from the library, buy a used one or borrow one from a friend, it will work with your pen.
This is so refreshingly different from all those subscription models, that I keep buying the books and once my kids grew out of them I know I can gift them away.
At least that was the case 2-3 years ago.
My children loved to listen on audio books on CDs (can be rented from libraries or bought for cheap) or on an old 1st gen iPod.
I might build this with my children together.
The original box itself was way more expensive than the Toniebox, like double the price, but I think they've made it considerably cheaper when they released the second hardware version of it. And the original box still works until today, continues to be supported by their app and has already been built in a very sturdy way (I've opened it up once to add magnets inside, so the figurines stick on it, which they normally don't do - that's the one thing the Toniebox people got right).
Which is a bummer, as I went looking after your comment - Toniebox is great but I agree it feels overpriced on the content side (perhaps it isn’t, if their competitor couldn’t make the business model work…)
https://old.reddit.com/r/jooki/comments/1eltdcm/muuselabs_ha...
Also what helps: resale value is great, so after the Tonies have had their time and your kids become older... just sell them off.
They licence the songs and then record them in-house and goodness me some of them are disappointing if you are familiar with the real soundtracks. The Moana one has the same two singers doing impressions of every character.
You might want to check out https://www.hoerbert.com. This is a remarkably well-built, low-tech alternative. It is somewhat primitive, but the company seems willing to indulge customers who are technically inclined.
As an adjacent thought on the Hörbert device:
Since we live very far away from family (transatlantic flight), we decided to have our relatives record themselves reading books for our kids. They shared the audio files over Google Drive, and we could load up the audio files onto the Hörbert device so that our kids could listen to their custom audio books whenever they wanted. It provided a nice way to help the kids feel connected with the grandparents and such. With the Hörbert, all that involved was ejecting the SDK card and amending its contents on a normal computer.
A more hidden champion is Ankersteine. I have one of their construction kits which is in my family probably since around 1885 and these kits are still produced today.
Lego has these, too, of course, but with Lego you at least have the benefit of being able to infinitely combine these parts to build stuff from them. Playmobil is "dumb" in that regard, you can't combine anything except in those ways in which it was specifically designed to be combined.
The real alternative to Lego in my opinion is Duplo, from the same manufacturer. They have no really small parts at all, so these are really good for outside play. But still infinitely combinable.
[1] https://www.playmobil.com/en-us/content/junior_themepage/jun...
Other than Playmobil and Lego I have not seen toy fischertechnik for years, but I occasionally recognize their non-toy fixings.
Fischer was the most prolific German inventor with 570 patents, who amongst other things invented the plastic wall plug.
https://www.fischertechnik.de/de-de/produkte/industrie-und-h...
There is a „toy“ section for children, but it is to learn about electricity or renewable energy, and I think the real customer of the page are not the depicted children, but the papa with an engineering degree.
https://www.playmobil.com/es-es/
https://www.playmobil.com/fr-fr/
and based on the dropdown at the bottom, quite a lot more countries
It's in german and I can't speak to the quality of the english translation which is available
[1] https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-11993-toniebox_reverse_engineeri...
This used a much simpler device - basically it consisted of two electrical probes connected with a wire, one of them containing batteries and a light bulb, and it worked together with a board with contact pads with hidden interconnections. Then there were several sheets where you had to find the numbers in the picture corresponding to the labels printed along the right side of the sheet.
I also like the honesty of the text on the box saying that it's "electrical", when the temptation to (incorrectly) use "electronical" instead must have been great...
I had a Questron pen as a child and loved it, also made by Ravensburger.
IIRC, thats the video with the talking calculator demo...
I was wondering if they are licensing the same technology base.
Looking at the Sonix website (the company providing camera+decoder chip solution used by TipToi) https://www.sonix.com.tw/category-en-956 they seem to have at least 6 generations of the code with varying amount of encoded bits.
Some of the related patents https://patents.google.com/patent/US6548768B1/en (Anoto ~1999/2003) https://patents.google.com/patent/US8061611B2/en (Canon ~2006/2011) https://patents.google.com/patent/US20070246547A1/en (Sonix ~2006/2009) https://patents.google.com/patent/US10614333B2/en (Sonix ~2015/2016)
they seem to describe slightly different variations of data encoding. Searching for Anoto (company that made one of the first patents) leads to a bunch more products using this technology. List of 400+ patents https://patents.google.com/patent/US6548768B1/en#citedBy citing the Anoto 1999/2003 patent also gives a list of companies working on related products or technology. There are even some from LeapFrog but those seem to mostly cover practical application and UI aspects of a product using the optical position/code detection system.
Overall feels like Anoto is focusing more on a system which decodes the points into X/Y coordinates and covers whole page with contiguous pattern, but Sonix more on having codes which give specific ID although they also one version which gives XY position similar to Anoto. That might be partially a workaround to make the encoding schemes different enough not to infringe each others patents.
That doesn't really give a good answer to your question, but If I had to guess Leapfrog is probably buying their technology somewhere else possibly from Anoto.
There is also one similar product using Grolier name, which seems to use tech from Sonix just like TipToi so potentially compatible, at least the codes not necessarily the book format.