A maker created an ASCII-style aquarium for a smart-home display. Fish made from characters swim across the screen, including one that shows a live sensor temperature. Home Assistant can trigger falling food that the fish chase, and users can adjust fish count and swimming speed. A Halloween mode replaces fish with pumpkins, ghosts, and other spooky icons, and a scare effect displays an image and plays a sound. The panel can also show a voice assistant's state.
A smart-home dashboard now reports the temperature through a swimming fish—and gives you virtual fish to feed.
An external expansion adds typed and spoken AI conversations to a working 1989 Atari Portfolio while retaining its original keyboard and LCD. The device can also describe camera images and play internet radio.
Maker Davide La Sala uses an ESP32-based external module for networking, audio and camera functions, with the AI accessed online. The language model does not run on the vintage computer itself.
The keyboard and screen are still from 1989, but the machine can answer you with modern AI. It feels like a phone call from the future.
ESP32 iPhone Agent uses a tiny board to receive iPhone screen mirroring and act as a USB mouse and keyboard. An AI app on that same phone directs taps and swipes, such as setting an alarm. No separate computer is needed at runtime.
The AI lives in the phone but needs an external mouse to touch its own screen.
RayTriangle built a game console inside a tiny television antenna plug, including its battery. An ESP32-S3 generates the video and audio signals for an older PAL television and runs DOOM.
Two small circuit boards sit on either side of the battery and connect through a flexible cable. The system creates an analog television carrier signal, while a Bluetooth game controller handles input.
The game console has shrunk until it is effectively the antenna plug behind the television. DOOM is on the screen, but the console is almost invisible.
ESP-Vim runs Vim 9.2 directly as firmware on ESP32-S3 and ESP32-P4 microcontrollers, without Linux or another operating system underneath. On a board with a display and keyboard, it becomes a small computer dedicated to editing text.
Beyond editing files, it includes Git, MicroPython, SCP/SFTP and a web interface accessible from Vim. The project currently reports testing the ESP32-P4 and ESP32-S3 in an emulator; physical boards have not yet been tested.
Instead of getting a computer to run Vim, this project makes the computer almost entirely Vim. Even quitting does not reveal an OS underneath—it simply restarts Vim.
PickentCode built a computer powered entirely by a small Stirling engine heated by an alcohol lamp. Instead of a wall outlet or battery, the flame keeps a generator turning to power an ESP32-C3 and a small OLED display.
A 16-key keypad lets the machine run CHIP-8 games and custom programs. To stay within the tiny power budget, wireless features are disabled and the processor speed is reduced when full performance is not needed.
Turning on this computer starts with lighting a flame rather than pressing a power button. If you want to keep playing, keeping the fire alive becomes part of using the machine.
A real walnut shell has been turned into an IR blaster by packing an ESP32-C3 and infrared LEDs inside. The shell is split along its natural seam and fitted with small neodymium magnets so the two halves can be opened and closed.
The walnut sits in the living room and connects to a home-automation system over Wi-Fi. When it receives a command, the LEDs inside transmit infrared signals to control appliances that do not have their own network connectivity. It was built by JSK-koubou.
Instead of buying a discreet enclosure for a home-automation IR transmitter, the electronics were hidden inside an actual walnut. The remote sitting in the living room is now literally a nut.
TamaFi V2 is a pocket virtual pet that treats nearby Wi-Fi and Bluetooth activity as its environment. When it goes hunting, the radio activity it finds changes hunger and mood, while it can also choose behaviors such as discovering open networks or taking a rest.
Nearby radio activity is classified as calm, busy, open, noisy, or hostile. Detecting deauthentication or disassociation activity can lower comfort and happiness and trigger a glitch-like facial reaction. The current firmware is read-only and does not store SSIDs or MAC addresses. It was created by CiferTech.
Instead of feeding a virtual pet with a button, this one treats the Wi-Fi around you as its food supply and habitat. Take it somewhere with hostile radio traffic and even the pet gets upset.
A wrist-worn synthesizer and 16-step sequencer attaches like an old-fashioned slap bracelet. Its transparent enclosure contains an ESP32-S3, display, speaker, and rechargeable battery, while brass contacts along the side can be touched with a stylus to play notes.
Instead of a custom spring mechanism, the wristband uses a curved strip of steel measuring tape wrapped in clear tape. Combined with the transparent PETG enclosure, the result deliberately recreates the translucent gadget aesthetic of the late 1990s and early 2000s. It was built by maker 3DSage.
A portable sequencer makes sense. Choosing to wear it by slapping a piece of measuring tape onto your wrist is where the project becomes much more memorable.
A system can use electrical signals from the body to control infrared appliances such as a television. Electrodes capture signals produced by blinks or muscle movements, Neuro PlayGround Lite detects them, and its ESP32-based hardware sends the corresponding infrared remote command.
The Neuro PlayGround Lite can measure small biopotential signals including EEG, EMG, ECG and EOG. In this example, the practical control is less science-fiction mind reading than turning eye and muscle signals into new physical input buttons. The project was demonstrated by Upside Down Labs.
Instead of looking for the remote, you first attach electrodes to your forehead. It adds a few steps, but turning a blink into a channel button still feels pleasantly futuristic.
Adafruit's John Park built One Key, a wireless mechanical keyboard containing exactly one key. It connects as a Bluetooth HID device and can act as a mute button, presentation clicker, macro launcher or other configurable control.
Despite having only one physical key, it can send characters, combinations such as Ctrl-Z, strings and media commands. A WebSerial interface also configures LED colors and sleep behavior. The input hardware has been reduced to almost nothing, while the configuration for deciding what that one button means has become impressively rich.
The keyboard has been reduced to one key, but the settings for deciding what that one key does keep multiplying.
RotaryCell turns an old rotary telephone into something you can carry away from the phone line and use over a cellular network. The original handset, dial, switch hook and mechanical bell remain intact: dial a number normally and it places a mobile call; receive one and the old bell rings.
Maker fregacmols fits an ESP32-S3, cellular modem, battery and circuitry that imitates the telephone exchange the vintage phone expects. Rather than teaching the 1950s hardware new behavior, the project miniaturizes enough of its old infrastructure to make the phone feel at home on LTE.
Modernizing the rotary phone by shrinking the telephone exchange and bringing it along is wonderfully backwards. The old phone gets to remain completely itself.
A smart-home dashboard now reports the temperature through a swimming fish—and gives you virtual fish to feed.