STARBOY

this session was all about making starboy feel real before the parts even show up. the website now opens with an intro where he hops onto a dark stage, a spotlight flickers on and finds him, and when you hit “leap into the experience” he jumps straight at the camera and his screen opens up onto the page. i wrote a renderer from scratch so his body reads as actual polished chrome instead of flat grey, and gave him new glowing mint eyes. i also moved the keyring off the outside of the star and into a hole through its point, rebuilt the 3d files around it, and re-rendered everything in black chrome with a steel ring through it. every link and heading on the site now reacts when you hover, with letters that roll and ripple as your cursor moves over them. next up is building the real one once the parts arrive.

parts aren’t here yet so this one was all software. the firmware compiles for the first time, and i wrote a hardware test that checks the screen, backlight and every sensor one by one so i can catch a bad wire before closing the shell. i added a tuning console so i can make him shiver, play any effect or change how sensitive he is over usb without reflashing. then i wrote tests for his mood logic, and they caught 3 bugs that would’ve only shown up on the real star: shaking froze his eyes, hanging on a belt loop counted as tilted forever so he’d never sleep, and my battery saver made him deaf while asleep. the website got a sensor sandbox where you control his temperature, noise, tilt and shake, plus you can tap any of the 400 eye looks to get the exact seed for a real star.

i’m building a tiny wearable pet from scratch: a chrome star with a round screen for a face that clips onto your belt loop. he reacts to you, so shake him and he gets dizzy and mad, take him somewhere cold and he shivers, and yell near him and he gets nervous. every star rolls his own eyes on first boot, with 4 shapes and 100 colorways for 400 looks, and some only show up 0.04% of the time. i designed the 20.5mm shell in openscad with a stepped pocket so the 37.5mm screen board actually fits, hand-wired everything to a seeed xiao esp32c3, and finished the eye firmware with 20 rare effects. you can play with him live at starboy-diy.nadellasripad11.workers.dev, and next up the parts arrive so i can print and chrome the shell and wake him up for real 👀

star shaped keychain with a round display eye that reacts to shaking, cold, noise and gets sleepy when left alone. runs on an esp32-c3 with an accelerometer, temp sensor and mic, and every unit generates its own eye colours and pupil style from a seed so no two come out the same. the shell took a few tries to get right, first a rounded blob then long thin spikes, before landing on a fat middle with short points. caught a display pocket that was 4mm too small (every listing quotes the glass size, not the board) and the back engraving cutting into the electronics cavity, then added checks in the cad so those can’t sneak back in. stls are exported and ready.