Doomscroll Too Much and This Virtual Pet Dies
Smartphones have plenty of tools designed to keep us from spending too much time on them. Screen-time reports show exactly how many hours we have wasted, and app timers can lock us out after reaching a predetermined limit. But those restrictions are easy to ignore or disable. Maker Brenpoly came up with an approach that is harder to ignore: keep doomscrolling and your virtual pet gets sick and eventually dies.
The project is called PolyMO and takes some inspiration from the virtual pets of the 1990s. Unlike a Tamagotchi, however, this pet is connected to an Android phone over Bluetooth Low Energy. That connection allows it to monitor what is happening on the phone and react accordingly.
PolyMO is built around a Waveshare ESP32-S3 1.8-inch AMOLED Touch Display Development Board. This combines an ESP32-S3 microcontroller with a 368 × 448 AMOLED touchscreen, microphone, speaker, audio hardware, six-axis IMU, and real-time...
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