How it works
A small ESP32-S3 handheld turned into a companion with a big animated face. It blinks, glances, breathes and changes mood.
It started as a port of the ESCLabs DeskBuddy sketch. I built it in public on X and asked people for feature ideas. The board is borrowed, so I backed up the factory firmware and tested the restore before flashing anything.
What it does
- Dances to music. The mic finds the beat, the face jumps between 10 dance faces, and Shazam names the song.
- Reacts to you. Tilt it and the eyes lean, shake it and it looks surprised, lay it face down and it gets sleepy.
- Knock to pet. Knock on the case for love, dislike or angry faces with cute sounds.
- Talks back. Hold a button and speak. Whisper, Gemini or Cerebras, and Piper run on my Mac over WiFi.
- Pomodoro hourglass. Flip it to start, turn it sideways to pause.
- Clock page with date, battery and weather for Bengaluru.
Vibing to music, from X
What stuck
Rhythm detection failed on real recordings. "Loud for most of 3 seconds" worked.
Stack
ESP32-S3 / Arduino C++ / Python / Whisper / Gemini / Cerebras / Piper / Shazam / OpenWeather
