Two big milestones today: the hand-routed joystick breakout boards arrived from JLCPCB, and the display driver was rewritten four times to solve the V4 partial refresh problem. Along the way, a pin assignment error in the KiCad symbol was discovered and fixed — a lesson in trusting community component libraries.
Added the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W (RP2350) as a third target board alongside the original Pico W and ESP32-S3. The Pico 2 W is now the default development board for Dilder. Also captured photos of the current Rev 2 build running Sassy Octopus.
The octopus can finally hear us. For the first time, the Dilder responds to physical input — a 5-way joystick module wired to the Pico W's GPIO pins, driving mood changes on the e-ink display in real time.
The face was done. 16 distinct expressions. But the body was the same for every mood — a static black blob. Today the octopus learned to move, and two moods got entirely new body shapes. Fat is fat. Lazy lounges. Angry trembles. Chaotic distorts. The body finally matches the face.
One octopus personality isn't a pet. It's a novelty. Today the octopus learned to feel — angry eyebrows, sad droopy eyes, chaotic spiral pupils, heart-shaped creepy eyes, and 12 more distinct emotional states. Each one changes how the octopus looks, moves, and talks.
The biggest architectural decision so far: throw away every pre-rendered frame and draw the octopus mathematically at runtime. The firmware went from 4MB to 30KB. This is how and why.
Meet the first resident of Dilder. She's got a smirk, two round eyes, five wavy tentacles, and 196 opinions about WiFi, toasters, and the meaning of ink.
We got pixels. Real, physical, black-on-white pixels on the Waveshare 2.13" e-ink display, driven by C firmware on the Pico W. Phase 1's proof-of-life is alive.