hi this is Dom from tech advisor and we are here with the brand-new Sphero
bolt we're gonna do a little unboxing and then we're going to run through a
few of the new features in the latest sphere a product so first off let's get
the outer box out right here we go the Sphero bolt so as you can see it's well
a sphere funnily enough the sort of reflective packaging here might give
away one of the key new features which is a sort of 8 by 8 light matrix within
the transparent sphere and yeah it's this is pretty nice packaging but lets
so we've got I'll kill that alright
okay get rid of that and now we have the name box again more shiny reflective
stuff it's really nice actually they put some work into this okay so
more B this lightning bolt symbol so we've got in here we got a few little
bits it's not just boring leaflets so there's probably some of them you get a
set of stickers love a good sticker that is the boring leaflet the legal guide
and then the last thing we've got is this sort of a cardboard protractor and
then on the on the reverse side you got a clock face which is because they're
kind of positioning a lot this again it's like I'm kind of educational tool
this is something you'll be able to use to sort of work through programming the
bolt if you want to program it to go in certain directions this is just a kind
of handy guide for like younger kids I guess who can figure out sort of the
compass points and the 360 degree Direction stuff so we have the charging
base charging cable and there we go that is it this fear of bolt so see it's
about the same sizes sort of the spark plus and a few of the older Sphero
models totally transparent so you can see
everything that's going on this side you can see all the bits all the new
components so right here we've got that light matrix so you can sort of set
patterns up on that kind of stuff and you can see all the sensors and stuff
going on in there there's a lot to unpack and we will get to that and show
what they do next right so the first thing we notice about the bold ones we
turn it on is that led light matrix which is the big sort of brand new
feature for this as you can see when we just turn it on normally you just get
this sort of grid of colors we can also play around with that this is in the
sort of play up so you can set what color you want it to be going through
all of them and also change the brightness all the way down to just
turning it off entirely let's set it well then that sort of turquoise your
color oh cool so as you're just sort of driving around
it'll just be lit up like that this is pretty much just like any other
Sphero try not to ride it off the desk much like in the recent ones you've got
an option different ways to drive it so that was just using the sort of
on-screen joystick you've also got things like tilt controls so if I tilt
the tablet there we go it's yep and then we go he's going way
off little unwieldy on a small table but you see where it's going the the semane
new control option they've added in here is a slightly weird one called kick
which has a strange football theme World Cup inspired I guess where you sort of
just like flick and then you can stop it oh there he goes the good thing is the
bolt is very sturdy so he survived that fine okay
so the control stuff this is all pretty standard spirit stuff this is the same
as in any of the other ones other than the kick feature which you're not gonna
use to very long I promise you what's slightly new in the play app are
there's now some slightly different games user kind of familiar they do a
nice job of showing off what the LED matrix does so if we go into exile 2
which is the sequel to exile which was in the Play app before what we see
is we need to get a little animation on the matrix there of our ship this is all
sort of spaceship shooter very simple game and you just play it by tilting the
bolt around
which is somewhere that in round trip which is another one of those sort of
returning games this is pretty simple but you'll just see the color on the
matrix change as we play I'm really bad at this game so this won't last very long
we can see it now it's complete now that I'm on a blue level and as you can see
it's sort of changing as I go with around voltage changing color tell me
which side I have to go for so yeah so that's the play app which is basically
the same as what it's before if you've had hours of Sphero before then you've
used some of these minigames you know that it's the kind of thing that's
diverting for about 20 minutes and then you get kind of bored so let's now go
into the new updated sphere edu app which is where we can really make the
most of what the bulb does right ok so this is the new updated version of the
ad you out though it's pretty similar to what you seen before if you've had
another sphere oh so what you get is a sort of two main bits which are programs
and activities so programs are all little bits of software using the sort
of coding features built into this app that you can sort of go through to make
your bulb do stuff basically so if we go into hello world which is obviously one
of the sort of introductory ones sitting up there so we see we get this whole
mess of block based coding looks very complicated but if you pull back it's
not that bad so it's all sort of you know if then functions and if it's tough
you get different sort of color blocks for what kind of operator you're using
and this is all design so this is sort of one that Sphero's built itself I'd
like to take this like a copy it to my device and then I could play around with
it I could tweak it I could change what I want it to do
but if we at start we'll see what this particular program is designed to do
okay
side one side two
okay and we'll find another one of those okay about this there's snake
so yeah someone at spheric has actually built the game snake that is playable on
the little matrix display this shows off the in addition to that block based
coding we've also just got full JavaScript so if you actually just want
to if you know how to code in JavaScript or you want to learn you can use the
bolt to do all that and obviously this is a pretty complex one and I don't know
any JavaScript so I won't delve into how that works now as we can see we now have
snake on here at fight I think I tap the alt somewhere there we go okay so I have
to tilt
no no apparently not very good a snake either as we see here these are all the
apps the programs that be made by the team at Sphero which obviously right now
that's the majority of them we've also got a community tab so right now there's
not much in that but these are all the community submitted things so if you
come up with a program you can send it in to Spiro this will all be curated so
to make sure everything actually works make sure there's no profanity things
like that but it means there'll be a huge ecosystem of programs to use as
again they already have been with the SPL K+ and with the sphere and mini
which already sort of built into this app already but it's gonna be even more
taking one to DeBolt tech like that matrix display we're sure of something
else the bulk can do that it couldn't do before which is the light meter this is
another of the new sensors that built into the bulb which is it can detect the
ambient light and react so this little program sphere is made which basically
turns the ball itself into a light meter so if we load it up I'll see in our
studio lighting it is freaking out because it is already very very bright
if I cover up the sensor a bit we can see it goes a bit dimmer and if I let
the light and again it's gonna go nuts there we go
so obviously you can use this sort of to test out in darker rooms you could if
you're in a dark hair and then you could put your phone torch on top of it and
that will set it off you could also use the light sense to do other stuff you
could set it so that in if the lights go out then the light matrix turns on to
max brightness just sort of turn your bolt into a mini mini torch stuff like
that one of the other cool sensors is actually something annoyingly I can't
really show you doing anything it's kind of the most exciting one though there's
now an infrared sensor in here which the bulk news to talk to other bolts the
problem is we only have one bolt here so I can't show you that you can see a
couple of the programs here there's this IR rescue victim and IR rescue hero this
is something I saw the Sphero guys demonstrate for me where one bolts are
plays a superhero and the other bolt plays a victim and also one bolt says
helper blow in danger and then it's finished playing that out it
basically sends a signal to the other bolt now it's your turn to read your
line and so the vaults kind of can act out a little story each one triggering
the next one once it's done they're also sort of they're saying so you're saying
that this is going to be updated over the next few months we're gonna have
full sort of like swarm robotics features if you get enough bolts
together which is pretty exciting obviously there's an educational focus
to this so in addition to these pre-built programs you've got the
activities tab which gives you more stuff to sort of teach you how to do
things so if I go into the matrix one this will basically teach us how to use
the matrix how to create our own animations this is also education based
it's now got this new side by side thing so what we've got the program on the
right here we've then got instructions on the left including videos you can
mark things as complete once you're done teachers can use in a classroom to
actually sort of monitor which of their students have completed which steps
things like that and you get all these detailed instructions on how to do
everything so for this case yeah it's for a matrix animation I've really made
one that we can take a look at it it just sort of goes through all these
different slides of this sort of arrow going down the screen and if we look at
how that runs we just have that little arrow playing down again this is really
similar to stuff stuff to what the last fearo's have done particularly the the
spark class this looks a lot like the spot boss it's just there's new sensors
in there now the software has been updated though that software update will
roll out for people using the older models as well so you get to take
advantage of all that the drive for the bolt really is just do you want to get
to play around with this new light display do you want to play around with
the light sensor do you want to try and like team up with people who have other
bolts so that you can kind of create these interactive IR games using
multiple bolts at once that sort of stuff you could never do with any sphere
before and that's exciting the big thing with any sphere of device is the price
this is 150 dollars or 150 pounds or 150 euros which is a lot for a toy as with
any spirit some of the the Play app stuff you will get bored of really
quickly if all you want is something to drive around it is not worth 150 pounds
of dollars but if you think you're going to get
stuck into the coding if you're going to want to learn how to create your own
apps create your own programs create little games this is a great way to
learn this is a great way to get into coding or to get your kids into coding
so probably worth the cost if that's what you think it's going to go