Copyright © Françoise Herrmann
For bedtime, playtime, funtime, traveltime or lockdown time, the Toniebox® is a charming little WIFI-connected audiobox, which promises big adventures and countless stories and songs, for the toddler crowd (+3), and up. Created by parents, who wanted to give children the augmented possibilities of story-telling and music in the digital age, without imposing screen limitations on visual imagination, the soft Toniebox® plays stories, songs and music, with no advertisements, at the touch of a Tonie® friend.
Equipped with Tonie® ear controls to increase or decrease the volume, the Toniebox® is super easy to operate. Place or remove the magnetic Tonie® friend onto the Toniebox® to start or stop the device. Tilt the Toniebox® to go back. Tap the Toniebox® to skip. Parents and grand-parents can even record 90 minutes of their own stories for playback, using the Creative Tonie®. The Toniebox® was inspired by MP3 players, the operation of which the inventors intended to simplify for little children.
Available in a variety of colors, the Toniebox® pairs with a variety of Tonie® friends, such as the Fairy Tale, Super Hero, or Disney and Pixar Tonie® friends (sold separately), each of which renews and expands the story-telling, music and song capacity of the Toniebox®.
The Toniebox® is a patented invention, originally hailing from Germany. The following US utility patent, US10960320B2, titled Toy, recites the components of the invention, including essential aspects of the invention algorithm. The components of the invention comprise such items as:
- the speaker
- the memory configured to store media files that can be played, replayed, and reordered into playlists
- an electromagnetic field sensor, and an electro-magnetic wave sensor, configured to contactlessly detect properties, or changes in properties, connected to the media files, and
- a control unit connected to the speaker (and/or a display screen), designed to drive access, and retrieval of information, from the media files, in cooperation with
- a physical user-input element.
The marketed embodiment of the invention includes only audio, and audio recording components. However, the scope of the invention extends to devices and methods for playing, replaying, and recording, image, video and 3D information, as well as for software execution.
Below, the abstract of the invention.
A device for replaying audio data including data sets of separately readable ordered data sequences to be replayed and including a loudspeaker or a loudspeaker connection, a sensor that can detect within a region of its surroundings a property or a change in a property of the surroundings, a control unit that can drive the loudspeaker or the loudspeaker connection for replaying audio data, where the control unit, in response to a select signal from the sensor, generates a command to jump to a next one of the separately readable ordered data sequences to be replayed. [Abstract US10960320B2]
The patent Figure 2, together with an image of the marketed Toniebox® and Creative Tonie® friend, in pink, are also included.
Specifically, the patent Figure 2 depicts the Toniebox® device with a Tonie® friend identification carrier 8. The Tonie® friend identification carrier has legs 9 with magnets, which can interact with magnets beneath the surface of the Toniebox® base plate 4 (undepicted in Fig.2). The magnets enable to bypass the design of a pedestal for attaching the Tonie® friend to the Toniebox®. When the Tonie® friend is attached to the base plate with magnets, the sensor reads the Tonie® friend information, sends it to the control unit, which then retrieves the playlist, stored in memory, or on a remote computing device 11, associated with the particular Tonie® friend. The Figure 2 also depicts two user control ears, 5 and 6, one larger than the other, used for volume control. Finally the Figure 2 depicts a display screen 7, in front of the device, for embodiments of the invention that might include video, image and/or 3D components.
References
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