Summary
- This ESP32-S3 virtual pet on a Touch AMOLED uses BLE and local AI to simulate life.
- Its companion app monitors screen time; if you doomscroll, the pet gets sick until you close the app.
- It runs 100% offline; the GitHub repo shares the full build so you can make one to break your scrolling habit.
Doomscrolling is pretty nefarious; as damaging as it can be for you, it can also be very addictive. But what if your endless swiping caused harm to something else, too? Such is the case with this ESP32-S3-powered virtual pet, which senses if you’re endlessly scrolling through your feeds and will slowly deteriorate in health until you stop.
Just look at that face
You can check out the project yourself over on the ESP32 subreddit. Created by user brenpoly, this pet lives on a Waveshare ESP32-S3 Touch AMOLED 1.8, which connects to your phone to offload on-board AI tasks, meaning you can speak to your pet and it’ll respond. To keep it healthy, all you need to do is keep yourself off the usual apps that tend to suck all the time out of your day.
If you can’t help yourself and decide to scroll your For You feed for a bit, you’ll soon learn the errors of your ways:
“The companion app monitors screen time across flagged apps. If you exceed a set threshold (e.g., 5 minutes on Instagram/reels), it signals the ESP32 over BLE. The pet gets sick, calls out, and the only way to heal it is to physically close the app. It can also summarize incoming Android notifications aloud via local TTS.”
Is it really worth destroying your own digital pet purely so you can read angry opinions on social media? Surely not. If you think this would be a fantastic way to peel you off your screens, you can check out the full project and how to make your own over on the Polymo GitHub repo.
Related
I turned my old phone into a device that does something my $300 smart home gadgets can’t
Turns out I haven’t been utilizing my old phone enough.