I built an AI Tamagotchi before Meta could

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta made AI seem adorable with its cute little faces and now wants to sell a Muse Charm this holiday season, a device resembling the classic Tamagotchi toy. However, the author of this report decided against buying one, as they already have a Muse Charm at home that they built themselves for just $50.

Their creation, while simpler than Meta's, still boasts features such as talking to Muse, cute avatars, acting as a pocket watch, and a remote camera viewfinder. It can potentially control the author's smart home as well, provided the user injects extra code.

The author obtained a 1.75-inch touchscreen computer pendant from China, specifically the Waveshare ESP32-S3 1.75C, for $50. This device, approved by Meta, serves as one of the company's initial suggestions for building a "Muse Gadget," a device that connects directly to Meta's Muse AI cloud using open-source code and tokens.

Upon receiving the pendant, the author found it somewhat useless initially. Setting it up required plugging it into their PC, pointing Claude (an AI coding assistant) at Meta's GitHub, and pairing it to the Muse phone app. However, Muse initially struggled to understand the author's commands and had a slow response time. Despite these issues, the author successfully improved Muse's functionality using Claude's assistance.

Claude's help included creating a conversation history page, adding a British AI voice to speak responses out loud, building a camera preview over Bluetooth, and generating different avatars with behaviors like hunger, boredom, and dirtiness. The author even managed to create a pocket watch face with three hands that tells the time and loaded video clips of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg introducing the Muse Charm onto the Waveshare.

While the author acknowledges their lack of coding experience, they believe building the Muse Charm demonstrated the potential of the device and that it may not be solely worth purchasing for its built-in features.