Hong Kong-based Elecrow, who not long ago completed shipping their CrowPi 2 laptop kit based on the Raspberry Pi, have launched their latest Kickstarter campaign: Crowbits. Crowbits are magnetically-snappable physical programming blocks that enable kids to put together complex constructions without all the tedious wiring-up. They’ve made many of the blocks LEGO-compatible so extending the parts with your own construction blocks is an exciting option.

Programming is carried out using LetsCode, which is based on Scratch 3.0, which should be familiar to kids who are used to visual programming environments.There are 80+ modules available and Elecrow have kitted them up into various groups as you can see here:

The more advanced kits require you to use a board as the “brains” and if you want a micro:bit-compatible kit, go for the Inventor’s Kit, details of which you can see below:

They’ve already reached their $10,000 goal, so it’s sure to be funded and the pledge level costs are quite reasonable (although watch out for import charges as they’ve not mentioned them or where it’s being shipped from).

You can view the campaign here and view the (slightly too-peppy for me, but I’m not the target market!) campaign video below: