Creation Crate is a monthly “tech education-in-a-box” subscription box filled with awesome engineering, technology and programming themed projects for kids! It contains challenging, entertaining, and educational stuff for older kids and teens! With Creation Crate, your child gets to explore a new world that will blow the minds of Mom and Dad!
The box works best with kids ages 12-16 years old, unless you have a child that is a whiz with electronics!
With Creation Crate, your child will learn about circuit boards, electronics parts, programming, and of course problem solving.
There are different subscription types available: Monthly and Auto-renewing subscriptions (pay every 3, 6 or 12 months). Like most subscription boxes there are bigger discounts for longer subscriptions.
Shipping: FREE to Canada
Coupon Code: Save 10% with promo code SAS10CC
What Came In The Box:
Every project comes with an instruction booklet. This booklet gives you a detailed, step-by-step guide to building the project. Pages examples include:
– Parts (individually wrapped and packaged)
– Instruction Book with Common Errors, Exercises, and Sneak Peek
– Hardware
– Program link
(This box was sent to SubscriptionBoxes.ca for review purposes, please contact us if you’d like us to review your box)
The box came in a neat and clean looking white box. Upon opening the Creation Crate, the items are neatly packed and wrapped in tissue paper. The parts are all individually packaged and the instruction book was placed on top to be the first thing you read. The instruction book was heavy paper, and full color – which really helps when parts are color coded! This box was making a Mood Lamp!
Reading the instructions over, the project looked pretty straight forward. I’ve created a website, how hard can this be, I thought to myself. Like I said above, the full color instructions were a big help. I’m not an electronics guy, so I had no idea why the parts had to go in certain spots, but I followed along and within about 30 mins I had the hardware done!
Next step was programming the mood lamp. The instructions told me to go to a website and download some free software to be used to program the mood light. I clicked and installed. For some reason, such a simple program required over 85Mb of space, plus numerous drivers to be installed. It took a little while but all was installed and I began to code. I think a little more explanation of what your coding would be helpful as the lines of code may make sense to someone knowledgeable in this field, but a child might not be able to make the connection to what the end result will be. I thought I was done, then I hit upload and realized just how many mistakes I had made… oops. Copying the code EXACT is the key. 🙂
Once all mistake were corrected, next came time to upload the program. I found that I received an error code so I emailed Creation Crate. Within a few hours I received a reply with a common fix, and sure enough that worked! I really liked the quick response from them. The program was uploaded to the mood lamp and i was about to test it out. Unfortunately, only the green led was working and the red and blue leds did not light up. I will re-check again to make sure everything is correct, but I might have received a couple duds. 🙁
Update: I contacted Creation Crate and explained the problem. A few days later Chris at Creation Crate sent out a full pack of replacements! I inserted the new LEDs into the board and everything worked great! Thanks Chris!
In the end, I did create a mood light, though it won’t win any awards for its looks hahaha. However, that is the point of this box, to create the raw components and learn along the way. Once the mood light is completed, you can then complete the activities at the end of the book; playing with the code to see the changes it makes. This part I found quite useful as your child can use their imagination, and see first hand the cause and effect of code changes.
Verdict: I originally thought this would be a great subscription box for your children who are showing an interest in electronics and robotics. I even thought that my 4 year old could help me out and build it together, but after building the mood light, I agree with Creation Crate that this is a box for kids 12+. There were challenges along the way, and overcoming those challenges is all part of the learning process that the box aims to provide. The first box is a crash course into electronics and programing and kids/teens who are very excited about this niche will love this box and the projects coming month after month! Other kids who are not too tech savvy may have difficulties and become frustrated. I had to email to get help with the problem I was having, and kids may not be willing to do that, and be stuck with a 1/2 done project. I would also like it if the item was more useable. My mood light only works when connected to the computer via USB, however, something the kids can take away and place on their bedroom shelf would be more useful (a battery pack would have solved this). And, in the case of the mood light, a simple housing around the components would have been a good idea too; this way kids can display it on a shelf, without risk to the delicate components (re-use the box in some way?). Overall, its a great box for tech savvy kids who want a challenge, but not so much as an introductory electronics box. It is nice to know that if you run into trouble, the customer service at Creation Crate is awesome!
What are your thoughts on Creation Crate? Leave a comment!