Electronics Idea
Date: 30 January 2026
Category: Electronics
Back when I was a kid, I remember the tamagotchi craze hitting my school. They're the pocket sized virtual pets you had to keep alive and everyone had one. You had to take it to school on the sly, or it would die if you left or at home.
Fast forward many years, I saw one in the shop and thought my kids would love that. It's wasn't a Tamagochi, just a cheap immatation, but thought it couldn't be that different.
So I took them back home and handed them over to the kids, they were opened and I was pretty disappointed. I remember starting with an egg and the little creature evolved based on how well you looked after it. These however, were much more simplified. You picked what animal you wanted from the start and that was it.
The biggest gripe was that one of the three buttons was a reset button. There were a few times when this button was accidentally pressed and all progress was lost. This was devastating for small children.
This got me wondering, how difficult it would be to create my own virtual pet? Take in mind that I've never done any electrical work... ever.
I'm any case, I thought it could be fun to document my struggle!
Ideas
The main things which I think are important are the form factor and battery life. There's no point having a small portable item if the battery only lasts a few hours. To help minimise mattery consumption, I would need to use low powered components.
I quite like the idea of them being able to interact with one another. If both of the girls had one, it would be nice if they could use the devices to play with each other. My main thought is battling like Pokemon.
I did a little research into this and found out about Digimon virtual pets. They were created by the same company which created tamagotchis but could battle each other. I remember them being a thing when I was a kid, but I don't remember any of my friends having one. The main down point to the Digimon was that you had to connect them together to battle, which meant you needed to know someone else who also had one.
I really like the idea of using the Nintendo 3DS streetpass type functionality where if you were near someone else with a 3DS, your games could exchange data in some way... so for example, you'd be able to see their Mii character in one game, or they might give you an item in another game. I'd want to use this mechanic so if you walked past someone with one, they would passively battle in the background. I don't know how possible this would be with the hardware.
Hardware
I think the hardware I need is somewhat minimal. I'd need a microcontroller, a screen, and a few buttons.
Microcontroller
I had originally started looking at the Raspberry PI Pico 2 W as I had used a few of their other boards before. While doing research I found out about the ESP32 chip and some of the boards were about half the size of the Pico. Being how small the project will be, I didn't think I'd need the extra ports.
Screen
I opted for a basic OLED screen, purely because power consumption was minimal and it would be easier/quicker to draw things for it.
Purchase
I totally cheaped out and went with AliExpress in the end. I wasn't sure how well this was all going to go, so I didn't want to spend 4 times the amount buying from someplace more local. The grand total was... (drumroll please!) £6.58, which got me:
ESP32
OLED display
Buttons
Breadboard
No idea how well these will work together, but looking forward to trying it out!