Turn your tablet into an intuitive, kid-friendly remote

There’s a great moment in the video below where one of the developers of a new remote for kids stands his four-year-old in front of a television and tells him he can watch one of his favorite shows. He says, “It’s on right now. Here’s the remote. Go find it.”

His son is visibly excited at the prospect of getting to watch TV, but totally baffled by the remote control. He can’t find it. He doesn’t even get close.

This reporter feels his pain. Remotes for watching cable television are just really complicated. Much too complicated for a kid (or this reporter).

So enter a new product developed by Dumbo’s Cookie Smart in collaboration with Virgin Media. It’s called MegaMote.

Founder and CEO Louis Auguste, Jr., told us via email:

The problem is kids who can’t read yet can’t use the on screen EPG (That’s the TV grid where you navigate by time and channel). So we didn’t see the point of replicating this EPG on the ipad as many remotes do. Instead we decided to create a remote where kids can navigate using pictures and sounds. And we focused just on channels that have children’s programs.

It works by way of your iPad, making it easy for kids to navigate a television by simply showing them the icons for shows that are on right now, one show at a time. They select left and right arrows to scroll through channels.

If you’re concerned about how much television your children watch, the MegaMote allows a parent to set a timer for the amount they can watch in a day. It can also let a parent block a channel.

Virgin Media came to Cookie Smart with the idea of a remote for kids after hearing that the company had put together a prototype iPad remote for the blind. Originally called “Project Oscar” by the Dumbo team, after Auguste’s youngest son, the MegaMote is now in the field, getting tested by somewhere between 100-250 people. We first spoke with Auguste in May, just as he transitioned from Dumbo to London for a last dev cycle before field testing began early this month.

The company is based in NYU Poly’s Dumbo Incubator. Its website shows a team of three.