Starbie

Starcade35

Starcade is a motion-controlled handheld arcade pet and retro game console. Inspired by classic handhelds and desktop pets, it brings interactive games, motion sensing, and sound effects together in a custom wing-shaped PCB. Instead of relying solely on traditional buttons, you interact with games, menus, and pet reactions by physically tilting, shaking, and rotating the board.

What It Is

Starcade is designed to sit on your desk, display custom animations on a bright OLED screen, and react directly to how you handle it. Tilting, rotating the encoder, pressing action buttons, and listening to sound effects and LED animations are all core to the physical experience.

Virtual Pet Simulator

• Walking & Animations: Watch your pet walk back and forth across the screen automatically.
• Nap Mode: Put your pet to sleep to recover its energy levels over time.
• Stats Tracking: Monitor and update your pet's current Joy, Energy, and Fullness stats, which are saved automatically to the board's non-volatile memory.

Environment & Sensor Monitoring

• Temperature & Humidity: Reads ambient room data in real-time using a connected DHT11 sensor.
• Tilt Controls: Uses an MPU6050 accelerometer to detect board tilts and shakes for navigating menus and playing games.

Built-In Mini-Games

• Dodge Game: An obstacle-avoidance game where you tilt the board to move your player up and down and score points.
• Reflex Test: A reaction-speed challenge that tests how fast you can hit the button when the signal goes live.
• Snake Game: The classic retro grid-based game where you guide a growing snake to eat food without hitting the walls or its own tail.

Hardware & Audio-Visual Extras

• NeoPixel Light Show: Dynamic, colorful lighting patterns that cycle across your LED strip.
• Sound Effects & Test Mode: Generates various audio tones and alerts through the buzzer for games and button presses.

The board includes an ESP32-C3 microcontroller, 0.96" OLED display, 6-axis MPU6050 motion sensor, DHT11 temperature/humidity sensor, addressable WS2812B RGB LEDs, active buzzer, and a rotary encoder inside a compact wing-shaped PCB design. It is USB-C powered and optimized for easy component assembly and custom firmware hacking.

Why?

This project was created as a complete, hands-on hardware and embedded software tutorial, taking builders all the way from custom PCB layout and Gerber manufacturing to writing full Arduino firmware from scratch.

Project Status

The custom PCB layout, ground plane generation, Gerber manufacturing exports, and component DRC checks are complete and verified. Starter Arduino IDE code and pin assignment maps are set up to handle display drivers, motion detection, RGB lighting, and menu navigation.

Software

Firmware/ contains modular, self-contained Arduino IDE sketches for the Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32-C3. Builders customize pin assignments, motion sensitivity, sound effects, LED lighting modes, and sensor readouts at the top of the sketch. See the Firmware/ README for library setup, board manager links, and flashing instructions.

Repository Contents

PCB/ — KiCad source files, schematic diagrams, and ready-to-upload Gerber fabrication exports (.zip)

Renders/ — 2D/3D front and back PCB renders with custom silkscreen artwork (STARCADE35, AXISAP, and emblems)

Project Guide.md — Step-by-step assembly, soldering, and manufacturing guide

Firmware/ — Arduino IDE starter sketches for OLED graphics, MPU6050 motion tracking, DHT11 environmental readings, WS2812B LEDs, buzzer audio, and rotary menu navigation

BOM/ Starcade 35 – bill of materials

$0.30 left of the tier's funding.