rocat2026 · ESP32 desk companion

KITCAT

A robot cat with an animated LCD face, RGB eyes & ears, web-radio streaming, motor dance moves, mini-games, and a mood engine driven by real sensors.
upgrade firmware User Manaul Gebruiks Handl. Build Manaul Bouw Handl.
Fun facts
Same gesture, different mood
Pet it while it's charging and it registers as LOVE. Pet it unplugged and it's just HAPPY.
Don't shake it
The accelerometer triggers ANGRY on a hard knock — rate-limited to once every 10 seconds so it can calm down.
It gets bored of you too
Two hours with no interaction and it switches to BORED — checked once a minute, not continuously.
Tiny screen, hand-driven
The whole face lives on a 100×48 pixel monochrome LCD, pushed byte-by-byte over an 8-bit parallel bus.
Six built-in games
Including a Wumpus hunt — all playable one-handed from the joystick.
It doesn't sleep, it switches off
An IO-expander pin literally cuts power to the board. On the next boot it checks two pins to guess whether a tap, an alarm, or the button woke it.
built on
Libraries external dependencies actually linked into the current build, and how KITCAT uses each one
SparkFun SX1509I2C IO-expander driving display power, LEDs, motors and audio enable in DISPLAY_/LED_/AUDIO_DRIVER SparkFun LIS3DHAccelerometer readout in ACCELEROMETER_DRIVER, feeding wake logic and mood/tilt detection Adafruit_NeoPixelDrives the 6× WS2812 RGB LEDs in LED_DRIVER — FastLED is listed in CLAUDE.md but is not actually linked in
Adafruit_GFXVendored/forked copy in lib/LCD, backs the custom SED1530_LCD driver and every drawing primitive on screen
QRcodeDisplayRenders WiFi-join and captive-portal QR codes on the LCD via lib/LCD_QR / lib/GUI_QR WiFiManagerCaptive-portal WiFi provisioning in WIFI_DRIVER GEMCustom manual_update fork — renders the on-screen settings menu in GUI_Menu; U8g2 support disabled via GEM_DISABLE_U8G2 ArduinoJsonParses/serializes JSON across weather, geo-IP and the web dashboard arduino-audio-tools + libhelixMP3/ICY internet-radio streaming and decode pipeline in AUDIO_WEB_DRIVER
ESP-IDF esp_http_serverBacks web_dashboard_idf — the active REST API and dashboard, not ESPAsyncWebServer
what it does
Features jump straight to the wiki page for any of these
Eye & carousel
Animated eye on the SED1530 LCD, a screen carousel, status bar, and idle logic.
Mood engine
Sensor-driven moods — battery, light, motion and WiFi decide how the cat feels.
RGB eyes & ears
Six WS2812 LEDs driven by Adafruit_NeoPixel, mapped to mood and event effects.
Web-radio audio
Internet radio streaming pipeline plus mood sounds and a volume model.
Mini-games
Six built-in games — Connect 4, Invaders, Wumpus and more — on the joystick.
Web dashboard
Async HTTP server with a REST API and safety-checked motor teleop.
Power management
Power latch, deep sleep via the ULP coprocessor, battery-aware wake sources.
Data broker
A central blackboard: topics, dirty flags and locking rules tie every task together.
Connectivity
WiFi provisioning, weather, news, geo and NTP time sync.
system at a glance
System architecture everything talks through one blackboard
Inputs
Joysticks / ADC keys
Touch strip
LIS3DH accelerometer
LDR light sensor
PCF8523 RTC
Battery ADC
→
DataBroker
blackboard state
+ dirty flags
→
Outputs
SED1530 LCD
6× WS2812 LEDs
2× DC motors
Audio DAC + amp
Services — CarouselManager, MoodManager, WebDashboard/AudioWebDriver, WebFetcher — all read and write the same blackboard rather than calling each other directly. See the Architecture Overview for the full picture.
read more
Documentation map full wiki lives in /wiki
User ManualFor end users — every feature and how to configure it Gebruiks HandleidingVoor eindgebruikers — elke functie en de configuratie ervan Architecture OverviewBoot modes, FreeRTOS task layout, startup sequence, main loop Hardware ReferencePin map, I2C devices, SX1509 IO-expander map, power circuit Data BrokerThe central blackboard: topics, command flow, locking rules GUI & CarouselScreen carousel, GUI elements, input handling, status bar, idle logic AudioWeb-radio streaming pipeline, mood sounds, volume model Power ManagementPower latch, shutdown paths, wake sources, battery monitoring Mood ManagerSensor-driven mood scoring, LED/sound mapping, serial debug commands ConnectivityWiFi provisioning, WebFetcher, weather/news/geo/NTP, time & timezone Web DashboardHTTP server, REST API, command reference, teleop safety StorageNVS key reference, SPIFFS layout, factory defaults GamesGame framework and the six built-in games