HoneyComb is a set of playful electronic blocks, designed for makers of all ages and skill levels.

What is HoneyComb?

HoneyComb is a set of playful electronic blocks, designed for makers of all ages and skill levels. With so many different types of blocks and endless combinations, you can quickly design, program, and prototype your own creations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkU6GGwDHsY

Our Mission

Honeycomb is designed to help (coding illiterates) people scared by computer science to easily and rapidly build (prototypes) creative works too.

How does it come along

Honeycomb first came into our mind when we found out a great deal of people who were always stuck on the starter kit and their passion waned as time went by. So we thought that was it possible to come up with a product that's not self-limited, but scalable and interdisciplinary. We did our research and test, and it turned out hexagon is the best option. So we modeled our product after honeycomb, as Laozi puts it in his Tao Te Ching:

"Man models himself after Earth.

Earth models itself after Heaven.

Heaven models itself after Tao.

And Tao models itself after Nature."

So its name and shape were all set and we made the first set of prototypes, including LED, Buzzer, Relay and Servo blocks. But that's just not enough. To help people make amazing works, we had to incorporate state-of-the-art blocks, so we tried cool sensors like MIDI, camera, IoT, mind control, leap motion, VR traveling, voice and gesture recognition. To lower the threshold of learning, all blocks were made interchangeable and nicely sealed. It's us that should worry about technical details, and you worry about creativity. We wanted people to only focus on creativity rather than lost in details.

Just to be on the safe side, we decided to launch our first 3 kits:

Music Kit: the world is your oyster;
Camera Kit: call the shots;
IoT Kit: connect the dots.

Logic thinking

To improve logic thinking, we put in a lot of thoughts:

Magnetic snap

No more endless wires

HTML5 programming

No programming skills needed

Technical encapsulation

No more technical details

Hexagonal interface

Boundless combination

50+ modules tested

Up to 100+ modules

Lego compatible

Use middleware to be compatible with Lego toys

Easy structure

Input, logic and output

For ages 5 and up

No computer, no screen, hands-on coding

What do we do to make it work

To ensure perfect magnetic snap, complete data pin contact and flexibility, we've tested many magnets from N35 to N40, regarding magnetic force, flexibility, contact, and gilding thickness. To improve its scalability, we adopted hexagon as its basic form and to make sure every block independently controlled, we designed 1-in-3-out interfaces. Also, we tried several solutions to deal with conflicting attraction and repulsion. The most difficult part was define scalability and compatibility of the interface. We came up with a unique G/D/S/V transmission mode, which simplified the compatibility between analog and digital modules, while I2C was adopted to solve the compatibility between data modules. After several trials and errors, we finalized our mold design in September 2016.

Why Honeycomb

Honeycomb hides all the technical details that has been troubling non-computer majors and enables them only to focus on logic thinking and creativity. With its infinite scalability and smooth compatibility, we encourage people to make full use of everyday objects such as tree trunks, bananas, soft drink cans. It's just like the French artist Auguste Rodin said,

'Beauty is found everywhere. Our eyes do not show a lack of sense of beauty, but a lack of observation.'

We also advocate an eco-life as you can see all our packages are made by cardboards and cut by laser.

What we're doing now

We're right now developing Honeycomb App trying to build a community where Honeycomb users can share their works and get inspirations from each other, and we're continuously adding new Honeycomb block members and cool ideas into the Honeycomb system. When Honeycomb grows to its maturity, you'll get to connect with endless Honeycomb users alike and you will benefit a lot from and be inspired by others' works. Don't let your ideas slip.