I am going to assume that the majority of my readers live on planet earth, therefore you are familiar with Pokemon Go. Very quick recap for my Martian friends -- Pokemon Go is an augmented reality game you play on your phone. You search the real world for virtual Pokemon and try to capture them in Pokeballs.
But Wait, What About the Eggs?
Oh yes, there are eggs in Pokemon Go that need to be hatched. How do you hatch these eggs? By walking... real steps... in the real world. At least that is what I thought until my son came to me and asked if he could strap my $750 phone to our ceiling fan and let it spin around all night.
You see, it didn't take long for Pokemon Go fans to start to figure out cheats and hacks to avoid this outrageous concept of having to walk to hatch eggs.
No, You Can Not Strap My Phone to a Ceiling Fan
I like Pokemon Go as much as the next zombie, but I did not see things ending well for my phone or the ceiling fan with this particular walking hack.
Now, at this moment, I had two choices as a parent. First, be annoyed my son was spending hours on YouTube trying to figure out how to cheat the walking requirement, when, you know, he could have just been walking. Second, treat this as a learning opportunity and make his little brain work this summer. You know I picked option number two.
If You Are Going To Cheat, You Need to Build Your Own Hack
I sent my 12 year old off with this sage fatherly advice, "If you want to cheat the walking requirement in Pokemon Go, you'll have to build your own walking simulation machine." I figured that was the end of that, but it turned out I was the one about to learn a valuable lesson. Never underestimate the determination and intelligence of a child with unhatched Pokemon eggs.
LittleBits + Yard Stick = Pokemon Go Walking Hack
An hour later, my son showed me this -
Yes, I Do Consider This a Proud Parent Moment
My son probably walks about 3-5 miles a day, so, this wasn't about being lazy and avoiding walking. This was actually a clever time hack. He realized at night, the phone just sits there doing nothing -- why not put it to work hatching eggs?
He had a problem and used his brain to find a solution. There was thinking, planning, testing, failure, more testing, more failure and then some success.
A huge shout-out to the littleBits STEAM Student Set. As the video shows, the littleBits made it relatively easy to turn his idea into a reality. LittleBits give kids the tools to make their hacks come to life and that is pretty awesome.
If you are interested in learning more about the littleBits STEAM Student Set, here is the video we did:
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