ESP8266 Tamagotchi

What is it?

ESP8266 Tamagotchi is an electronic pet from the 90s. It can eat, shit, sleep, and everything else that a pet should do.

The key component of the board is a Wemos ESP8266 mini-board, that is connected to an SSD1306 OLED screen with 128 by 64 pixels resolution (which is plenty, considering the 32 by 16 resolution of the original)

I designed it to assemble it together with my 6-year-old son. The result is a nostalgia-filled handheld toy.

Main features

How to use it

Soldering

The kit includes all the headers and connectors you need to make it work. However, you’d need to have a soldering iron and a small piece of soldering wire.

Soldering job will take 5 to 30 minutes depending on your skills.

Using Platformio and included code repository

Linked below is a repo with the Platformio project, so please follow the official Platformio installation guide first.

The code is based on the ArduinoGotchi Atmega emulator, which was ported to the ESP platform.

Open included firmware and build the project using the Platformio: Build task. Flash firmware to target using the Platformio: Upload task. Platformio will handle all the framework and library dependencies automatically.

How does it look like

Documentation

Both software and hardware documentation can be found on the project’s GitHub. You can follow project progress at Hackaday

Where to buy

You may support our work by ordering this product at Tindie or Elecrow