kotohi prelaunch

The virtual pet that takes care of your study

Kotohi is a fox that studies with you, on a small device that cannot open Instagram.

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A small device with four buttons, a virtual pet and nothing else.

Kotohi is a pocket study buddy. You can load flashcards to it and your own pet fox will study with you. It pulls you away from your infinite scroll and notifications so you two can focus!

estimated price (we hope)

Two kotohi devices at an angle: the nearer one open with a Japanese flashcard, the one behind shut, showing a focus timer with the fox reading.

Never used flashcards? It's two steps.

A flashcard has a question on the front and the answer on the back. You have to think about the answer before flipping it and then give it a rating. It's that easy ~

Kotohi will then remember which cards you said were difficult and bring them back before you forget them. So you study the hard cards more until they are easy!

  • The device's study screen: the kanji 山 alone on a white card, the fox peeking over the top of it, and one button marked Flip.
  • The same card flipped: 山 with やま and mountain under it, and the four buttons Again, Hard, Good and Easy along the bottom.
  • The end of the session on the device: COMPLETED, cards reviewed 5 of 5, 16 seconds, plus 5 kotoins, streak 1.

Lives in there, in a room of its own.

A whole room for mischief, the perfect environment for study and napping. Take good care of Kotohi and you'll both learn together.

The fox sitting on its rug, looking straight at you, with the whole room behind it.
hello
A kotohi device showing the focus screen.
focus timer

Pomodoro focus timer

When you want to focus away from your smart devices, Kotohi keeps time for you and keeps you company the whole time ~

A kotohi device showing the decks screen.
the library

Unlimited decks, in folders

Organise your study into folders and review all in one go. Works with Anki decks, PDFs or a text file, images and all, without any limit or subscription ~

A kotohi device showing the memotechnics screen.
in development

Helps you with hard to remember cards

Prepare mnemonics for your cards. If you rate them Hard get the tip on screen that will help you next time!

Cool! But who are you and why are you making this?

Hi! Thanks for asking :) We are a small team of 3 people making this device. Two of us are language learners, and we also have a language teacher. Using flashcards for studying languages is one of the most effective methods for the vast vocabulary that must be learned. But in today's world, it's very hard to put everything away and focus on learning new things. So we thought a dedicated device would help us do just that, and bring back the memories of virtual pets that we can have fun with.

Right now we are just collecting emails, and it would help us a lot if you shared this page! If we get to our email goal we'll try making a Kickstarter for it, to be able to place a big order for the components of the device. Feel free to let us know if you have any feedback, and for sure try the beta! It runs in your browser on basically the same firmware we've been testing, so you can still study and try if you'd like it or not. Of course it's not the same if you just have it on your phone, so stay tuned for news!

Join the waiting list

Humans and AI involved

A Blender screenshot: the fox character posed in its 3D bedroom. On the left the fox is in pose mode in untextured grey clay, the rig's control bones drawn over it; on the right the same room finished and shaded, seen through the device camera, with the outliner, the rig's bone collections and a row of keyframes along the timeline.

Given the current situation we would like to disclose the team, its capabilities and AI usage.

The team has one person that has 7 years of software developer experience and a degree in electronics engineering (that's me, hello!), another person that has an artistic background, 3 years of 3D modelling experience and a University Degree Spanish Teacher. The music on the device and videos we made was done by Lucie Lina who is a composer with 6 years of experience and a classical music student. As well as we have commissioned the fox character design from Pikuseru, we got help rigging from María Octavia in Preply.

We have not used AI for art, say character design, 3D model, rigging or animations, nor do we want to. We have however used it for speeding up coding and research of electrical components and some placeholders. Including this website, however any text and copy I have written myself, for better or for worse. And the design of UI and the websites has as well been dictated by us humans.

FAQ

Do I need the device, or is there an app?

The device is the point :) Your phone is the thing we are trying to get you away from. There is a browser version you can try right now, and it will stay around, but the plan is a little thing with four buttons that lives in your pocket or on your desk.

When can I get one?

We are collecting emails first. If enough people want one, we go to Kickstarter to order the parts, and the people on this list hear about it before anyone else. The €99 is our estimate until we have placed that order.

Can you make it with an e-ink display?

Yes, we'd love to! Eventually at least, we are a team of 3 so it takes time :) We would love to have a slimmer version with e-ink that lasts way longer. But we wanted a version that would be able to handle cute animations and colour for studying with images. For sure, let us know if you'd want one.

Is it open source?

Yeah, that's the plan. We want to publish the files anyway, in case anybody wants to 3D print their own case or change up the firmware :)

Can it load Anki decks?

Yes, we have a few ways of importing them, depending on how elaborate they are. You can try it out on the beta and let us know of any feedback if you try it!

Can it load decks from other applications?

We are hoping to make importers for the most common formats. If you have one deck that doesn't import nicely, just let us know and we'll try to get to it.

Will you have more characters?

That's the plan :) But art takes time, so let us cook and we'll get there. We'll also make it open source, so people can make their own custom characters and animations! Just be warned, it's quite a bit of work!

Are you sure you can build this?

We have some experience making products :) On the team there is an electronics engineer who can code. And we know enough 3D modelling and 3D printing to be able to make the prototype and make manufacturing possible. So leave it up to us!