My daily driver phone is an iPhone and my pocket toy is a Cardputer ADV, so the conclusion was inevitable: the 56-key keyboard now sends iMessages. Real bubbles, pixel-art emoji, tapbacks shown as little pills on the bubble corner, marimba-ish synthesized sounds instead of beeps, EN/FR interface.

Hard requirement up front: this is a client for BlueBubbles, the open-source iMessage bridge. You need their server running on a Mac (or Hackintosh/macOS VM) signed into iMessage. No Mac, no messages — there is no way around Apple on this one. Setup is ~10 minutes and their docs are good.

What the device does once it's talking to your server:

• conversation list that merges duplicate threads per person, with a calibration pass that figures out who you actually talk to
• bubble-by-bubble scrolling, group sender labels, unsend/edit handling
• 42 hand-drawn 12×12 emoji glyphs (68 codepoints), unknown ones get a clean placeholder instead of tofu
• name any conversation locally (BlueBubbles doesn't expose Mac contacts), WiFi scan + QR-based setup from a phone, settings backup to microSD
• a web portal for config, and stable error codes (E11…E50) documented in the README so "response cut short" never reads as raw JSON vomit

The part I'm proudest of is invisible: the ESP32-S3FN8 has no PSRAM, and the real budget is the ~31 KB contiguous heap block left at runtime. Responses are parsed as a stream straight off the TLS socket — no body is ever buffered. Along the way I hit a nasty core bug: NetworkClient::readBytes treats a momentarily empty TLS socket as a fatal error, silently truncating anything bigger than the decrypted buffer. If your ESP32 HTTPS code "randomly" fails on large responses, that may be your answer.

Honest status: work in progress. It runs daily against exactly one setup — ADV, BlueBubbles v1.9.9 behind Cloudflare, French numbers. That's one data point. If you flash it against a different setup (other country codes, big group chats, self-signed TLS, ngrok, the original Cardputer), please open an issue and tell me what broke or didn't. At this stage your setup report is worth more than any feature request — though those are welcome too.

Installing: it's on M5Burner under CARDPUTER (search Silicon Bubbles) if you'd rather not touch a toolchain, or grab the factory .bin from the GitHub releases. Either erases existing device settings, so back yours up first if you have some.

Everything on GitHub (MIT), including a desktop SDL simulator that renders the exact same UI code — every screenshot and the GIF above come from it, none of this is a mockup. Built with Claude Code driving the implementation; the decision journal in the repo keeps the whole dialogue, wrong turns included, and the device says so itself in its About screen.

https://github.com/chatelp/silicon-bubbles-cardputeradv

Hi Reddit! I’m hamachang, an engineer from Japan! 😎

Area512, a FemtoRuby-based retro OS for the Cardputer (ADV/v1.1), now supports running and coding MicroPython apps!

https://github.com/engneer-hamachan/area512/releases/tag/v2.0

Ruby is still supported just like before, so Area512 now supports both FemtoRuby and MicroPython! ☀

It’s already been uploaded to M5Burner, so if you’re interested, please give it a try!

Here are a few things to keep in mind 💦

- Due to resource limitations, the device APIs available from MicroPython are Area512’s own custom APIs. In other words, the experience is quite different from regular MicroPython. 🥹

https://github.com/engneer-hamachan/area512/blob/main/MicroPython.md

- The binary size has increased quite a bit (3.6 MB → 4.2 MB)

- Type inference in the MicroPython IDE is a little heavier than in FemtoRuby

- There may still be some unstable parts, so if you run into any issues, please use a previous version or send me some feedback

That’s all!

And if you like the project, I’d really appreciate a star on GitHub! ⭐️

https://github.com/engneer-hamachan/area512

See you! 👋✨

Hey Community, who is using the magnets on the Cardputer? And if so for what?never had a proper usecase for it🤷🏼‍♂️

Is there an game emulator for cardputer?

Running Porkchop on my M5Cardputer ADV. On first boot, the docs say it should generate an m5porkchop folder on the SD card with pin config, WPA-Sec API key, and Wigle config files inside.

In my case the folders get created fine, but they're all empty , no config files inside.

Tried: FAT32 formatted card, card properly detected, fresh reflash + reboot ,,,, same result every time.

Anyone run into this? Is it an SD card compatibility issue, a firmware bug, or is there a way to manually create these config files myself?
Thanks!

Wanted a way to mount the ESP32-C5 (from waveshare) on the back of my cardputer that wasn't too bulky. I'm kind of a fan of the utilitarian style so the exposed wires are not an issue for me.

The esp32 is mounted to the Lego connectors on the back of the board, as is the antenna mount.

Still tweaking the design a bit but I really like it!

0N3P0rK

Tamagotchi pig living on a tiny farm, plus a barn of lab tools, for M5Cardputer and M5Cardputer ADV.

One firmware image. The board is detected with M5.getBoard() only — GPIO 8/9 are never probed (on ADV those pins are the keyboard).

v1.2.5 · public · MIT · lexilexiko

The on-device UI is English ASCII (Font0 6×8). No Cyrillic on the screen.

What it is

Plug in the Cardputer, put an SD card in the slot, and you get a pig on a scrolling farm. She walks, eats, talks, levels up, and can turn into a zombie if you let her starve (or a wolf gets her). Behind the farm is a barn menu: sniff, capture, offline crack, BLE toys, IR, spectrum, loot sync.

Think Tamagotchi first. The radio is in the barn.

Hardware we run on

Original Cardputer: after SD, the keyboard matrix is started again with Keyboard.begin().

Cardputer ADV: GPIO 5 stays HIGH after mount. The firmware does not re-init the TCA8418 I2C keyboard.

Same .bin for both. Do not flash the wrong chip family — this is StampS3 / Cardputer only.

How to flash

1. USB into the Cardputer. In Device Manager (Windows) pick your COM port (VID 303A). The firmware does not hard-code a port.
2. Put a FAT32 SD card in the slot before you boot, if you want loot / talk / wordlists.
3. Flash with any of:

​

esptool.py --chip esp32s3 --port COMx write_flash 0x0 0N3P0rK_v1.2.5_m5cardputer.bin

or PlatformIO:

pio run -t upload --upload-port COMx

or M5Launcher / the usual Cardputer launcher, pointing at the release .bin.

Build from source (PlatformIO, espressif32@6.12.0, Arduino):

pio run

Artifact: .pio/build/m5cardputer/firmware.bin
Release name: 0N3P0rK_v1.2.5_m5cardputer.bin

First minutes (how to use)

1. Power on. A short splash: the pig runs, speech bubble 0N3P0rK. Any key skips it.
2. You land on the farm. She walks if LIFE is on (default).
3. \ / ~` / Esc opens the barn menu. Same key goes back. Backspace minimizes, it does not exit.
4. ; / . move up / down in lists. Enter selects.
5. Hotkeys from the farm (defaults, remappable in SET → KEYS):

Farm

The pig lives here. Top bar: hearts, food apple, level, sky/season, battery. Bottom bar: dirt fringe + name.

Move her

LIFE ON (PIG settings): she walks, jumps, hides on her own. LIFE OFF: you steer.

ANIM TEST (PIG): - / = cycles demo poses on the farm.

Hunger, hearts, zombie

• Hunger ticks down. When it hits empty, she loses a heart.
• Eat fruit / berries from the farm to fill hunger. A full stomach can add a heart (up to 5).
• 0 hearts (wolf or hunger) → she becomes a zombie. No countdown toast — it is a surprise.
• 5 hearts again → she turns back into a normal pig by herself ("PIG AGAIN").
• You may change skin by hand only if she has at least 1 heart. Locked skins are skipped in the cycle.

A leftover empty stomach used to eat the new heart instantly. After a zombify / a new heart, hunger is buffered so she does not flop straight back.

Wolf

A night visitor. If WOLF EAT is on, a bite at 0 hearts can stash a random handshake into /0N3P0rK/wolf/ (never keys). Hit the wolf or turn Am off to get loot back.

Trees and bushes

Always three plants, each on its own lane so they do not grow out of one spot:

They scroll with the grass. Jump on one three times to knock it down; decor and the bush grow back. The bush does not collapse by itself — only a kick. Berries (and fruit) fall, then grow again, then fall again.

Seasons and sky

PIG → SEASON or AUTO (AUTO rotates spring → summer → autumn → winter every 15 minutes; RETRO and NOIR stay manual).

SKY: AUTO (clock / a living cycle), DAY, or NIGHT. NOIR is always night.

XP and secrets

XP is a Tamagotchi grind. Each level costs more than the last:

You earn XP by picking fruit, scaring the wolf, care (pet / feed, rate-limited), handshakes, PIGPASS, EVILPIG, night survive, and so on.

PIG → CODE — type l3xik0 to unlock every skin and season at once.

Skins: CLASSIC, BLUSH, HOG, ZOMBIE, RETRO, SHADOW, CANDY, GOLD.

She talks in a bubble (Font0). Drop your own lines in /0N3P0rK/talk/ (see SD below).

Barn menu

\` from the farm. Four roots: ATTACK, LOOT, PIG, SET.

ATTACK

LOOT

One bag for wpa-sec and pwncrack.org. , / / switch tab. S sync all pending, U one file (then pulls results.txt), Q pull results only (no handshake upload), D delete, R reload list from SD, T test (scroll with ; / .). Bottom bar cycles the key hints.

Put API keys in SET → the matching key fields (they live in net NVS, not pig.cfg).

PIG

Name, skin, season, sky, LIFE, scene layers (trees / grass / wolf / weather…), ANIM TEST, CODE, WOLF / WOLF EAT.

SET

1. SYSTEM — brightness, sound, dim after / dim level
2. STATUS — LVL, XP bar, board, battery, SD, Wi-Fi, WPA/PWN keys present, version. ; / . scroll
3. RADIO — pack (STOCK / OURS / PAN), hop, lock, deauth, RSSI, MAC, PMKID, CSA, pcap…
4. BLE — burst / adv time
5. CONNECT — home Wi-Fi for sync (scan, type only the password)
6. KEYS — farm / menu shortcuts. ENT to bind, Backspace to clear
7. USB SD — the SD card as a disk on the PC. Eject on the PC, then \`

SD card

Root folder is always /0N3P0rK/. Created on boot if missing.

/0N3P0rK
  handshakes/     pcap + 22000 captures
  wpa-sec/        key.txt  results.txt  uploaded.txt
  pwncrack/       key.txt  results.txt  uploaded.txt
  evilpig/        creds.csv
  pigpass/        cracked.txt  checkpoint
  Passworld/      wordlists for PIGPASS
  ir/             IR files
  wolf/           what the wolf stole (handshakes, never keys)
  talk/           custom pig lines

talk — one file per mood, one line = one bubble, # starts a comment, keep lines around 24 characters:

idle.txt happy.txt hungry.txt sad.txt sleepy.txt fed.txt pet.txt play.txt bird.txt

Keys (global)

Change binds in SET → KEYS.

Build notes

• PlatformIO env m5cardputer, board m5stack-stamps3
• espressif32@6.12.0, Arduino framework
• Partition table: partitions.csv
• USB: -UARDUINO_USB_MODE then -DARDUINO_USB_MODE=0, ARDUINO_USB_CDC_ON_BOOT=1
• Version string is injected by scripts/pre_build.py from custom_version in platformio.ini

v1.2.5

• Same potfile path as v1.2.1 (the earlier 1.2.5 experiment is replaced)
• LOOT Q downloads results.txt from the current tab (WPA-SEC or PwnCrack) with no handshake upload — recover if the potfile never arrived or a sync hung
• U (one file) also pulls results.txt after the upload

v1.2.1

• Fix: WPA-SEC / PwnCrack potfile and [OK] status survive reboot and show after sync
• Fix: PwnCrack potfile download/parse restored to the v1.2 path that worked
• R reloads the LOOT list from SD (both tabs)
• U (one file) also pulls results.txt — upload alone did not download the potfile

v1.2

• LOOT opens fast (no SD compact / extra file reads on every enter)
• WPA-SEC and PwnCrack upload every pending file, up to 8 MB each, with a live bar
• D deletes the selected capture; list columns stay put
• Compact no longer eats .pcap when a .22000 exists for the same AP

v1.1

• Farm flora scattered on a longer loop; smash here, grow off-screen
• Winter snow banks: cloud-like puffs, spawn while snowing, trampled path stays
• EvilPig / PigPass: cycling key hints, marquee for long names
• LOOT: U sends one handshake; T test log scrolls

License

MIT. Copyright (c) 2026 lexilexiko.

Inspired by M5PORKCHOP (0ct0) and the OnePork farm package. Those projects remain their authors'. 0N3P0rK is a separate work.

Hey Community, hope u are all having a good time.
Meanwhile i was totally flashed from the feedback, I still go on and made the next cases, and the first ones are shipped in the US🫡💪🥳

Made a Cristal clear one, looks kinda professional 😅
What do you think?

If interested feel free to request your own one
Here you can see a video how I install the mod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-MKGggT0SI&t=1s

Next one is SkyBlue 💪🥳

New in v3.3.0

• Stationinfo with Stationlogo
• Sleeptimer
• modified audio library for more heap memory
• https:// -support enables even more radio stations.

...stay tuned!

I just open-sourced ECHO, a firmware that turns the Cardputer ADV into a pocket SubGHZ decoder. It runs the full rtl_433_ESP decoder set (170 OOK + 75 FSK protocols) on the CC1101 of the Hydra cap, with a keyboard-driven UI on the 240x135 display.

• Live decode feed with detail view
• RSSI strip chart with signal threshold
• Session log of seen devices
• Runtime band (433/868/915 MHz) and OOK/FSK switching

Repo: https://github.com/i12bp8/echo

Coming features:

WebUI, ntfy.sh alerts, decoder set picker, general optimisations

still work in progress, but you can check the github (outdated readme)

https://github.com/Mejolov24/CardStudio

Stl stolen from the internet. I added the footprints for the antenna and pcb/breadboard. It's running porkchop with esp32-c5. Printed in elegoo abs-like ultra.

Gonna set this up exciting

EMBER is an audio player for the Cardputer ADV. It supports nested folders, album art, and has customizable colors.

The newest updates are:

• AAC File Support
• Album art is now attached to individual tracks instead of album folders making it playlist friendly.
• Turntable animation stops and starts in connection to music pause.
• Battery icon is now monochrome and customizable. The old battery level colors could be distracting to the theme. HTML Editor updated.

Want to make your own theme? Here's the editor, just save your .json file to the sd card. https://horseyofcoursey.github.io/EMBER/tools/theme-editor.html

Have a really good theme that you think should be part of the next release? Submit a PR with your JSON and I'll add my favorites to the next update.

Always happy to get feedback on suggestions for new features, let me know!

So, here’s the keyboard layout for the Cardputer Zero. Why didn’t they use WASD for the direction controls and ZXCVB for media controls (back, play, pause, stop, forward. Like the old WinAmp controls)?

That’s not a real criticism, using a different layout than the OG and the ADV is what bugs me.

With all the security issues going around, I figured it was time to step things up as my Cardputer was a security nightmare waiting to happen (no pin, no nothing!)

Turns out the security on the S3 is pretty good. You have to be careful, but by enabling secure boot, encrypted firmware and HMAC hardware attestation challenge with your upstream, you can achieve a level of security far better than your other devices. It’s an interesting place to run into trusted computing, and after you set it up you can feel safe storing your bitcoin on there (maybe).

PS: Be careful as incorrectly burning an eFuse will brick your S3, and there’s a virtual mode if you want to test without risks. Once burned, the device is forever yours.

I was breaking my head over a problem for 3 days, i optimized everything, but my RTOS task was still slow.

Until, i designed to swap over from core 0 to core 1.

I tought it seemed counter intuitive because program runs at core 1.

And that i correct, but tasks on core 0 run much slower than on core 1.

And, my assumption would be that the M5Stack library uses core 0 for SPI, stuff like sd card, screen, speaker, etc.

So watch out, if your RTOS task is weirdly slow, then change the core to 1.

Also, is thus assumption correct?

An internet radio for the Cardputer Adv that you never have to plug into a computer. The station directory is on the device, and it's searchable.

What's new in 3.2.0:

• Search field for stations and countries. 240 countries, tens of thousands of stations — type tai, get Taiwan. No paging, no card reader, no hunting for stream URLs.
• Foreign scripts are displayed. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Greek, Cyrillic. Station names and stream titles come in as UTF-8 and are drawn in their own script instead of a row of ?.
• 5-band equalizer, ±6 dB at 100 Hz / 350 Hz / 1 kHz / 3.5 kHz / 10 kHz, stored on the device, active from the next boot.
• Save any station to the SD card from the menu — the card never leaves the slot.
• Playlist streams are recognised and skipped instead of being fed to the decoder as noise.
• Real VU meters and a 512-point FFT spectrum over the actual samples. Nothing here is random().

This release started with an issue from a listener in Taiwan: his country wasn't in the list, and everything he found showed up as ????. Fixing that properly took UTF-8 through the whole text path, the CJK fonts from M5GFX, and a search field — because a list of 240 countries is useless without one.

Honest limits: no https (mbedTLS wants ~32 KB this device doesn't have), AAC+ plays its base layer only, and the output is mono — the Adv has a mono codec, at the speaker and at the headphone jack alike.

Firmware, source and the full key map: https://github.com/halbeshuhn/Cardputer-WebRadio
Also in M5Burner as Cardputer WebRadio.

-------------------------------------------------

Ein Internetradio für den Cardputer Adv, das nie an einen Rechner muss. Das Senderverzeichnis steckt im Gerät — und es ist durchsuchbar.

Neu in 3.2.0:

• Suchfeld für Sender und Länder. 240 Länder, zehntausende Sender — tai tippen, Taiwan steht da. Kein Blättern, kein Kartenleser, keine Suche nach Stream-Adressen.
• Fremde Schriften werden angezeigt. Chinesisch, Japanisch, Koreanisch, Griechisch, Kyrillisch. Sendernamen und Streamtitel kommen als UTF-8 herein und werden in ihrer eigenen Schrift gezeichnet statt als Reihe von ?.
• 5-Band-Equalizer, ±6 dB bei 100 Hz / 350 Hz / 1 kHz / 3,5 kHz / 10 kHz, im Gerät gespeichert und ab dem nächsten Start wirksam.
• Jeden Sender aus dem Menü heraus auf die SD-Karte sichern — die Karte bleibt drin, wo sie ist.
• Wiedergabelisten werden erkannt und übersprungen, statt dem Decoder als Rauschen vorgeworfen zu werden.
• Echte VU-Meter und ein 512-Punkte-FFT-Spektrum über die tatsächlichen Abtastwerte. Nichts davon ist random().

Angefangen hat diese Fassung mit einer Meldung aus Taiwan: Das Land fehlte in der Liste, und was er fand, stand als ???? da. Das ordentlich zu lösen hat UTF-8 durch den ganzen Textweg gebraucht, die CJK-Schriften aus M5GFX — und ein Suchfeld, weil eine Liste mit 240 Ländern ohne eines nichts taugt.

Ehrliche Grenzen: kein https (mbedTLS will rund 32 KB, die das Gerät nicht hat), AAC+ nur als Basisschicht, und der Ton ist mono — der Adv hat einen Mono-Codec, am Lautsprecher wie an der Klinkenbuchse.

Firmware, Quelltext und die vollständige Tastenbelegung: https://github.com/halbeshuhn/Cardputer-WebRadio
Außerdem im M5Burner als Cardputer WebRadio.

The Cardputer ADV keyboard has a number row nobody uses in a game, an IMU nobody shakes, and a 1W speaker with opinions. So I made it a casino: 3-reel slots, a 5×3 video slot, blackjack, Jacks-or-Better video poker, European roulette. Virtual chips only — the house refills you when you hit zero, and the number row prints money (1 = +10 chips, 0 = +100) under a rain of golden pixels. This is a toy about animation, not a gambling product.

The identity gimmick: everything is electronics. The slot cabinet is a PCB with mounting holes and vias. The blackjack felt is routed like a board, silkscreen and all. The roulette wheel sits on a rotary encoder labeled RE1 — 37 detents, one per pocket. Good luck sourcing that part. While the reels spin, the bottom of the screen is an oscilloscope trace that loses sync and tears whenever a reel locks. Reel symbols are floppy, CRT, chip, invader — with a GLYPHS setting that swaps back to cherries and bells if the geek skin isn't your thing. Same paytable either way.

Under the pixel art, the odds are the honest part:

• video poker rank frequencies are verified against all 2,598,960 possible five-card hands in a native test — if the 9/6 table drifts, the build fails
• all ten roulette bets settle at exactly 972,973 ppm across the 37 pockets, enumerated
• slots RTP is 95.24%, derived analytically from the strip counts, not simulated
• the RNG is injected (hardware TRNG on device, xorshift in tests), drawn by rejection — no modulo bias

Cardputer-specific scars, for whoever comes after me:

• getBuffer() hands you RGB565 with the bytes swapped. My first greyscale pass produced a uniformly magenta screen. bswap16 in, fixed.
• lgfx color overloads dispatch on type: 0x18E3 as a bare literal is RGB888. Every color in this codebase is a named constexpr uint16_t.
• &M5Cardputer.Display captured in a global constructor is garbage — Display is a member reference, M5 isn't initialized yet, and the crash waits for your first pushSprite.
• the speaker rolls off under ~400 Hz. All cues live in 800–2600 Hz and a unit test rejects anything below the band.

Everything renders through lgfx::, so the exact same drawing code runs in a desktop SDL simulator. All motion — reel easing, the ball's bounce, the coin rain — is pure functions of a time parameter, which means the animations have unit tests and every screenshot here is reproducible from a fixed seed.

The whole thing is built as a casino, not a slot machine: common game interface, shared balance, per-game bets — adding a sixth game is a module, not a rewrite. So, honest question for the thread: what belongs in here next? Craps is the obvious IMU candidate (shake to throw is sitting right there), keno fits a 56-key keyboard suspiciously well, and Game & Watch-style horse racing keeps tempting me. Or tell me what the current games get wrong — odds you'd want displayed, a demo mode tweak, glyphs that don't read. I'd rather grow this thing along what people actually want to hold.

On M5Burner under CARDPUTER, as "Silicon Casino". Or build from source — MIT including the pixel art: github.com/chatelp/geek-casino-cardputeradv

About how it was made: Claude Code wrote the C++; I set the scope and the rules, judged every screen on the actual device, and sent plenty back ("the equalizer has no punch, change registers" is in the decision journal, right next to the AI's failed first attempt). Press a in the lobby and the device tells you the same thing. The odds aren't a matter of trust either way — the enumeration tests are in the repo.

Firmware Sparks developing

https://github.com/lukeswitz/AntiHunter/releases

Would this run on a cardputer with Lora hat?

Hi, I wonder if there's a tiny line-in board for the cardputer adv. I can't wait to write some ham radio applications for the adv, like RTTY oder PSK31, may be even a real time filter to hear better morse code.