I'm one of the KS backers, and I am absolutely blown away by the Thumby. What an awesome device!
But as an educator (programming, students are 16-18yrs) what has impressed me the most is the IDE. It's absolutely fantastic, a truly excelent resource. Coding, graphics and emulation in a simple package, no installs etc while still being full-featured and a very neat and practical way to do game development.
However, I find the thumby itself… not 100% ideal for educational use. The students have a hard time using them, or "seeing the point". It's not unusable by any means, but I find myself wishing there'd be something like the Arduboy or the PicoSystem in size, but with an IDE like the Thumby. I like the Arduboy a lot, but it's development tools require installation and are more fiddly than the all-on-one IDE of the Thumby.
I know the obvious answer here is "just make one yourself, you lazy entitled a**". I'm well aware I'm not owed anything and that this is a DIY community. If I had the time I'd absolutely dive into the github repo of the IDE and try to see if I can make it work with the PicoSystem or something. But right now I don't. Sorry. Just thought I might check, to see if what I dream of already exists or if anyone's already working on it.
So… Any suggestions? Any projects I should be made aware of?
