This PCB Has a Mood Engine. When It Gets Angry, It Takes Down Your WiFi.

A maker called CiferTech built a standalone virtual pet that lives on a custom PCB. TamaFi V2 runs on an ESP32-S3 — the same chip family powering a growing number of objects that blur the line between tool and companion — with a color TFT display, NeoPixel mood lighting, USB-C charging, and six tactile buttons, all on a board half the size of the original version.

The design decisions are what make it interesting. TamaFi doesn't run on timers or scripted loops. It scans nearby WiFi networks and uses what it finds as a kind of nourishment — more networks mean a fuller, happier creature. It has a mood engine driven by hunger, happiness, health, and electromagnetic density. It evolves through life stages from baby to elder based on how you treat it. And when it gets angry, it sends deauth bursts to nearby networks, briefly knocking devices offline. When it's content, it broadcasts WiFi access points with messages based on its mood. The firmware, board files, and enclosure are all open source on GitHub.

What's quietly radical here is the posture: a finished object with feelings baked into its firmware, not bolted on as a feature. What happens to the way we design consumer electronics when the default assumption shifts from "this device performs a function" to "this device has a disposition"? And what changes about ownership when it does?