Widget is a tiny companion that sits by your keyboard and lights up the moment something you care about happens. A timer ends, a delivery arrives, your coding agent finishes. He blinks, perks his ears, and celebrates with you. Open, repairable, and yours to keep, the kind of desk buddy no company can brick or take away.
Design yours right here: what you build on screen is what I print and assemble by hand. Around $90, once, shipped worldwide.
Not a gadget
A status light would have been cheaper. But you don't bond with a status light. Widget has a real face on a colour screen, eyes that blink and go wide, ears and arms that move, and a little voice for chirps and chimes.
Pet his head and he feels it, leans into it, and chirps back. He's quietly waiting for your hand. Give him a name. He's the kind of small, warm, slightly silly presence that turns a desk into your desk.
What he's for
Widget reacts to the things you'd otherwise keep checking for. His chest glows, his ears perk up, he chirps. You look over, you know, you get back to whatever you were doing.
Why him and not a phone notification? Because a notification needs you looking at the right screen. Widget sits in the corner of your eye whether you're in a meeting, cooking, or staring out the window. Nothing to focus, nothing to unlock.
Hooking him up is the easy part. Anything that can fire a webhook can light him up: a smart-home routine, a reminder app, a one-line script, or a Claude Code stop-hook for the devs.
Plug him into your computer over USB-C, or into a wall adapter and let him talk over wifi. Either way, he stays plugged in. Your call.
You've seen this movie
Cute robots, real companies, dead products. People got attached, and then the servers went dark and their little companion became a paperweight overnight. Not because it broke, but because they never really owned it. Closed code, sealed cases, a brain in someone else's cloud. The day the company moved on, so did your robot. Widget is built so that day can't come.
If I quit tomorrow, your Widget still works tomorrow. He's genuinely yours.
How it works
Around $90, once. That's roughly an ESP32-S3, the servos, a colour screen, and a printed shell. I'm not building a fat margin here, I'm finding out if people actually want him.
No countdown, no "only 3 left." The real limit is simpler: one person solders these, so batches are small, and I only open the next one when I can deliver it well.
Who's building this
I'm Eddy, just a builder who loves robotics, gaming and sci-fi, crossing one field into another, and using technology in creative ways. I'm building Widget by hand, one at a time.
I'm one person, not a company with a board that can pivot and brick your hardware. The flip side is honest too: hand-built means small batches and slower than a production line. But the files will be open, so this project outliving me is the design, not a wish.
I also built Spascii, a browser game where you explore a procedurally generated galaxy rendered in ASCII. Same hands, same love for crafting playful technical things.
That's the pitch. This isn't a store yet, and there's nothing to pay. If a little robot that's truly yours sounds like something you'd want on your desk, the email box is how you tell me.