What makes a virtual pet worth carrying around? Not the hardware. Not the display. It's the feeling that something in your pocket needs you — and that it notices when you're there. The user engagement plan is the design document for that feeling.
Two new components arrived for the Dilder build — a 5-way navigation joystick and a 1000mAh LiPo battery. Both have been fully documented with wiring guides, test code, and integration plans.
What if your virtual pet could detect other Dilders nearby? What if they could interact, exchange data, and even produce offspring with inherited traits? That's the peer discovery system.
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.
How do you know the DevTool preview matches the actual e-ink display? You port every C drawing function to Python, render both, and diff them pixel by pixel. Here's what we found.
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 hardware is wired up and running C firmware. Now we need proper tooling to make development sustainable. This post covers the setup CLI, DevTool GUI, and the workflow they enable.
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.