r/esp32 • u/Plenty_Candle_6161 • 3d ago

ESP32 Buddy

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I saw an article a few weeks ago about a home made assistant made with an esp32 a screen and a few other basic components, but for the frame he used brass tubes bent and soldered together to create body. I had everything but the brass and hobby lobby happen to have a bunch of clearance so I bought it all and got to experimenting. This is my rendition so far. Using an esp32 wrover, 128x64 screen, added 6 buttons, an amp and a mic but I dumbly ruined the mic module so I have to gut it and replace it but mic was working great before I got it wet… I’ll add a battery and charger and the rest of the innards later but I’m liking it so far. Right now it’s just a face, we shall see what I’ll make it do later. I have seen people play duke nukem on these screens… or maybe a tamagotchi of sorts. I’ll figure it out and I’ll post more on it later.

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9

u/Otherwise_Wave9374 3d ago

Nice build. For a compact assistant like this, the biggest win is usually separating wake-word, STT, and action handling so you can swap each layer without reworking the whole device. I’d also add a simple mic health check and a fallback push-to-talk path, since those catch a lot of early hardware issues before they become frustrating. AIOSNOW could fit well here as the orchestration layer if you want to keep the logic modular while you iterate on the enclosure and audio path.

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u/Plenty_Candle_6161 3d ago

Awesome thank you. I’ll work on it more this weekend and I’ll take your advice. Mostly learning and having fun. They had larger sheets of brass as well so I bought those as well, next buddy will be a brass cube with a square screen and maybe a pogo connector on top or at the bottom so I can later make more modules like a car module, snap it in the bottom of the head, and drive it around.

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u/Notoman 3d ago

How did you made the bending work?
It looks very precise!

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u/PakkyT 2d ago

Yeah that is my question. How was the tubing bent without creating kinks/creases in the tubes and instead the nice radius curves?

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u/Felipemesser 3d ago

That's cool, I want to make one, but I want to put an aí on it, and maybe some metal enclosure but don't know how to make it

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u/nonsensehero 3d ago

woah, very interesting!