A $50 Pendant and a Few Claude Sessions Produce a Homemade AI Tamagotchi

Key Points

Meta plans to sell the Muse Charm, an AI pendant with a squishy-faced avatar, this holiday season
Verge reporter Sean Hollister bought a $50 Waveshare ESP32-S3 1.75C touchscreen pendant from China
Meta officially suggests the device as a base for building a "Muse Gadget" that connects to its Muse AI cloud
Out of the box, the pendant had slow responses, no spoken replies and a screen that showed only a few words
Claude Code added a conversation history page, a spoken AI voice from ElevenLabs and a remote camera shutter
Claude also built Tamagotchi-style avatars with food, play, sleep and bath needs, plus a working pocket watch face
Hollister has no coding experience and says the code could be fatally flawed
He keeps the device on guest Wi-Fi and does not trust Meta's Muse agent with his email or home network
He questions whether the commercial Muse Charm will be as freely programmable as a development kit

How much does a homemade AI Tamagotchi cost to build?

Meta wants to sell you a Muse Charm this holiday season, a small pendant that carries a squishy-faced AI helper around like a Tamagotchi. Sean Hollister decided not to wait. He bought a $50 touchscreen pendant from China, hooked it up to Meta's Muse AI cloud, and then spent a few sessions with Claude Code turning it into a gadget he would actually use.

What hardware does a homemade AI Tamagotchi use?

The hardware is a Waveshare ESP32-S3 1.75C, a 1.75-inch touchscreen computer with a push-to-talk button. It looks a lot like the Muse Charm, and Meta officially suggests it as a starting point for building a \

This article was written with the assistance of AI.
News Factory APP - agentic news to boost your SEO & AEO.