Jaycar
ESP8266 Tamagotchi DIY Soldering Kit
A nostalgic DIY soldering kit that brings the 90s electronic pet experience to life on an ESP8266 platform. Built around a Wemos D1 Mini and an SSD1306 OLED ...
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A nostalgic DIY soldering kit that brings the 90s electronic pet experience to life on an ESP8266 platform. Built around a Wemos D1 Mini and an SSD1306 OLED screen (128 × 64 pixels), your digital pet can eat, sleep, and poop — just like the original, but with way more pixels.
The kit includes all headers, connectors, and components needed. Just add a soldering iron and solder wire — assembly takes 5 to 30 minutes depending on your skill level. Power it from a Mini-USB charger, power bank, or two AAA batteries for portable use.
Key Features
- Wemos D1 Mini (ESP8266) – WiFi-capable microcontroller board
- SSD1306 OLED Screen – 128 × 64 pixel I2C display
- 3 Push Buttons – For interacting with your virtual pet
- Buzzer – Sound effects for a complete retro experience
- Dual Power Options – Mini-USB or 2× AAA batteries
- Bonus Game – Space Invaders clone also available as alternate firmware
- Open Source – Full hardware and software documentation on GitHub
Assembly
Solder the included headers and connectors (soldering iron and wire not included). Assemble the four M2 brass standoffs with bolts to hold everything together. Detailed assembly instructions are available on the project page.
Firmware
The kit ships with a PlatformIO project. Flash the firmware using PlatformIO's Build and Upload tasks — all framework and library dependencies are handled automatically. The firmware is based on the ArduinoGotchi ATmega emulator ported to the ESP8266 platform.
Ideal For
- Learning to solder with a fun, functional project
- Retro gaming and virtual pet enthusiasts
- ESP8266 and Arduino programming practice
- Gift for makers and electronics hobbyists
Package Contents
- 1× Wemos D1 Mini MCU Board
- 1× SSD1306 I2C OLED Screen
- 3× Push Buttons
- 1× Buzzer
- 1× Dual AAA Battery Holder
- 4× M2 Brass Standoffs with bolts
- Headers and connectors
Resources
Jargon buster
Plain-language definitions for the technical terms used above.
- Headers
- Rows of connector contacts on a fixed pitch (commonly 2.54 mm) used to link a board to a breadboard, jumper wires, or another board. They come as male pin headers and female socket headers; when a module ships with pre-soldered headers it can be used straight away, whereas bare pads require soldering the pins yourself.
- I2C
- I2C is a two-wire communication bus used by many sensors and small modules. It matters because several I2C devices can share the same two wires, but each device needs a compatible address and your controller must support I2C.
- microcontroller
- A microcontroller is a small computer on a single chip that runs a stored program and controls connected inputs and outputs such as buttons, sensors, displays and communication interfaces. In a device built around one, it is the part that executes the code and coordinates the device's behaviour.
- OLED
- OLED stands for organic light-emitting diode, a display type where each pixel produces its own light. It matters because OLED screens are thin, high-contrast and easy to read for small status displays, but they can be more sensitive to image burn-in than some other display types.
Related Tutorials
Free guides on learn.littlebird.com.au
