ENTRY 04
Firmware & Server planned
The token collector reads the logs, MQTT distributes it, the board displays it. Then the face gets breathing, blinking, and moods.
It eats the tokens my AI crew burns through, feels the room climate in my office, gets excited about planes overhead, and is scared of thunderstorms. Built from a single board, a server, and way too much love for detail.
Instead of a dead readout full of numbers, there's a little creature sitting on my desk. When I work, it gets fed. When I take a break, it gets hungry. If the air is bad or the room is too warm, it gets fussy, no matter how full it is. Two displays show its world, and the third, the round one in the middle, is it.
The server runs an MQTT broker as the mail sorter, plus a few small collectors that read tokens from the logs, pull weather from Open-Meteo, and query planes via an ADS-B API. Everything gets broadcast over the network, and the board listens in and animates.
The best part comes from Claude itself: the creature gets its lines generated live, matching the real situation, never the same twice. And you can talk to it. Tap its head, speak, the server listens via Whisper, Claude handles the task, and the creature answers back in its own voice.
Started with the question of what a Pwnagotchi actually eats. Went from WLAN handshakes to planes to room air quality, and landed on the real idea: a creature that lives off the tokens my AI crew burns through.
Locked in three displays: Kitchen, Climate, and the creature itself, all driven by a single board instead of several separate ones. One sensor covers all three room readings, weather and planes come from the internet instead of a radio dongle. Faceplate ready to print.
Domain is locked in. Now figuring out how one board drives all three displays plus sensor and touch wiring, before anything gets ordered. Enclosure and pinout first, parts list after.
The token collector reads the logs, MQTT distributes it, the board displays it. Then the face gets breathing, blinking, and moods.
Claude gives the creature words, Whisper gives it ears. From here on you can talk to it and it answers back.