Whether you grew up in the 90s or not, you know Tamagotchi, the popular pocket-sized virtual pet platform. These battery-powered devices leave digital creatures in your care and expect you to play, feed, and clean up after them. Even now, Tamagotchi and corresponding Digimon are sold in the market. But his robotics buff Kevin McAleer went one step further and created his own robot from scratch using our favorite microcontroller. raspberry pi pico. His custom creations are officially ” Picotamachibi.
According to Kevin, the name is derived from several words. Pico comes from Raspberry Pi Pico which controls the behavior. “Tama” is taken from Tamagotchi, and “Chibi” is taken from the Japanese word “chibi-chara” or “little character”. Kevin explains that this custom Pico pet of his was programmed using his MicroPython.
The device is very similar in design to the original Tamagotchi. It has an OLED display and displays graphics depicting small virtual creatures. The menu bar has various icons that you can use to interact with and take care of your virtual pet. Sprites are also not static. Expect subtle movements and animations during use.
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Kevin designed and 3D printed the Pikotamachibi housing from the ground up. He can use a Raspberry Pi Pico or Raspberry Pico W for the project as wireless connectivity is not a required component. He uses his three tact switches for the input buttons and his SSD1306 OLED display with a resolution of 128 x 64 pixels.
The three buttons are A, B, and X. The A button is used to rotate menu options on the top bar. Select an item with the B button and cancel with the X button. A small skull icon will appear when your virtual pet’s health is compromised. Kevin has officially released a video explaining the code used in this project. YouTube channel.
If you want to recreate this Raspberry Pi project to create a virtual pet, check out his full blog post. website. Be sure to follow Kevin for future updates and more cool robot creations.
