InventrReviews of inventr.io

Quality stuff, good prices.

I received the 30 Days Lost in Space kit through the Civil Air Patrol Aerospace Education Program. I have found it quite interesting and innovative. The story with nice videos will keep my cadet's interest and focus on learning micro-controllers, peripherals, electronic components, and programming. I have used Raspberry Pi and Arduino for classes in the past and they were not as interest-holding as the 30 Days Lost in Space will be.

This kit is a nice collection of components with lessons to follow online. Parts are good quality and the lessons are fun. The fact that there is a bit of a story to the lessons makes it unique in the world of educational electronics and programing kits. Each lesson has a comment section where you can discuss with other people that are following along.

This is not a kit for a beginner, or at least not a not-tech-savvy-want-to-learn-with-my-teen adult. I felt that the online videos often went too fast, and assumed a basic knowledge of Arduino projects and programs. We started out being frustrated, because we were using a Windows computer, and therefore skipped the Mac instructions. The Windows instructions seemed hastily done, almost as an afterthought, especially after I watched the Mac video. Giving more background information, including on installing drivers, would have made this easier, built my confidence, and helped me avoid much frustration.

My 3rd grader loves to tinker with programming using Scratch, so I got the "30 Days Lost in Space" kit to help her dive a little deeper and stretch her brain a little more. The idea was so compelling that I bought it after seeing an advertisement on Facebook, which I had never done before. :) When the kit arrived, we weren't able to upload programs to our HERO board. Reading through the message board we saw that several other people had the same issue, so I reached out to Belrey for help. After briefly troubleshooting with me over email, they determined that the board was faulty and sent us a replacement kit at no cost which arrived after about a week. The replacement board worked flawlessly and we just finished Lesson 1. We even extended the lesson a little; rather than just making the LED blink on and off, we made it blink an SOS pattern in morse code (since we are stranded in space!) That let us get comfortable with changing the code and reasoning through some basic error messages like missing semicolons, and gave us a reason to learn how to define our own functions. My daughter loved it and we can't wait to do Lesson 2. So far I think this is a great product. It presents a fixed and concrete set of capabilities to work with (LEDs, a 7-segment display, a tiny screen, a speaker, etc.) which makes it easier to focus on the more abstract things about code and circuit layout. Plus the programs you write make this physical object do stuff! The world of electronics is so big it can be tough to know where to start. An important benefit of this kit is that it is self-contained; you don't need any other tools like a soldering iron, and you can focus on learning and building. As for the faulty board, it's unfortunate but that does happen. There is a global chip shortage this year due to covid so maybe they got a bad batch from the manufacturer and weren't able to ramp up QA fast enough. At any rate, I think the sign of good customer service isn't ensuring that nothing ever breaks (since that's impossible) but helping to fix it when it does, and by that measure I give Inventr top marks for being responsive and helpful.

The lessons have been incredible so far, and the email containing this survey link was very kind. I can’t really think of any complaints besides maybe asking for future videos to explain the programming concepts just a bit more thoroughly, so keep up the good work. To elaborate on that one comment, I already have a background in electrical and software type projects so I understand a lot of the fundamentals of programming already, but my father (who has a career in the field) pointed out that while the instructions in the video are clear on what to do it doesn’t quite explain why it works. For example, the average student wouldn’t know that a resistor is needed for each led pin and that would have potential to cause a mishap or maybe they would be confused on how to make a specific concept work on creative day because they don’t quite get how to take the instructions and apply them in other ways. However, that being said it wouldn’t take much more research to understand the missing pieces if I wasn’t already aware of it so I still believe that the instructions are very good. I only say the above to help you do even better for those after me. You’re doing a great job so far, so I look forward to your next kit once I finish my current one with my father.

Recently purchased via website. Unable to upload the blink program to arduino board. Went through diagnostics (Arduino IDE troubleshoot - error code, investigating on website, feedback loop test showed board was faulty) Please help

Bought through RadioShack. Unable to sign on to the website to launch. Will not accept my information.. Very fishy... Been trying all day. So...total waste of money right now.... I will keep you updated