06 / A small device with presence

AI Desk Companion

A compact animated object that senses context, responds with light and motion, and offers a few useful actions.

DifficultyAdvanced
TimeTwo weekends
Boards2 recommended

What you’ll build

A characterful physical interface with bounded behaviors and a transparent device state.

01

Architecture

Three parts.
One working loop.

01

Sense

Events become a small, debounced context model.

02

Decide

A local behavior engine chooses from safe actions.

03

Express

Display, sound, and motion share one animation timeline.

02

Build stack

Hardware

  • Multimodal development board
  • Optional motor module
  • Stable power
  • Simple enclosure

Software

  • ESP-IDF
  • LVGL
  • Board BSP
  • Behavior state machine
  • Optional agent endpoint

Capabilities

  • Display
  • Audio
  • Motion sensing
  • Haptics or motor control
  • Connectivity

Constraints

  • Local behaviors must work offline
  • Rate-limit mechanical motion
  • Make network activity visible

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03 / Build with AI

Give Codex
a better brief.

Choose a target board and copy a prompt grounded in the project’s hardware, constraints, and architecture.

Includes the goal, hardware capabilities, stack, constraints, architecture, and a safe first milestone.