Dismo Industries' Cyber Fidget Is a Pocket-Friendly, Chunky-Metal Espressif ESP32 Fiddle Toy

Ypsilanti-based Dismo Industries is preparing to launch a pocket-sized gadget built around an Espressif ESP32 microcontroller housed in a pleasingly chunky milled-metal case: the Cyber Fidget.

"The Cyber Fidget started off as an idea to create a retro, cyber, fidget, gadget thing. First and foremost, it needed to be something with a cool screen and clicky buttons. Something that looked different from everything else. Something that could play screensavers and games," Dismo Industries' Sam Steele explains. "I was tired of half-baked, disposable tech. I wanted a device that could stand the test of time and instill joy like a [Nintendo] Game Boy and feel like a Swiss watch. I believe you should own your hardware and be able to repair it, code it, and keep it forever. So I built the Cyber Fidget to be the last fidget toy you ever need and the first developer kit you want to carry."

The Cyber Fidget is built atop a single compact circuit board hosting an Espressif ESP32-PICO-MINI-02 microcontroller module, providing two Tensilica Xtensa LX6 cores running at up to 240MHz, 520kB of static RAM (SRAM) plus 2MB of pseudo-static RAM (PSRAM), 8MB of flash, and radios for single-band 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and both Bluetooth Classic and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). Elsewhere on the board is an Analog Devices MAX98357A amplifier and speaker plus MEMS microphone, an STMicroelectronics LIS2DH12 three-axis accelerometer, a microSD Card slot for storage, and a connector for a compact 0.96" 128×64 single-color SSD1306-based OLED display.

Elsewhere in the casing is a 400mAh battery good for "hours of active time, weeks of standby/deep sleep," Steele claims, a quartet of SK6812 RGBW LEDs, a USB Type-C port for power and data, a sliding potentiometer input, and six tactile push buttons — the latter two features exposed externally as a slider and six chunky buttons, machined in the same aluminum as the main body unless you opt for the lower-cost 3D-printed plastic variant. "There is no sugar coating it, the metal ones are way nicer, but they’re also way more expensive to make," Steele admits. "If you're into nice hand feel, can appreciate how much of a pain it is to make, and can afford it — buy the metal one."

For software, Steele has focused less on competing with devices like the Flipper Zero on the functionality front and more on having something fun to play with — promising games, animated screensavers, and possibly even music playback via Bluetooth-connected headphones or the internal speaker. Custom programs can be written using Arduino-flavored C++, Steele says, via third-party integrated development environments or the project's own web IDE, with plans to release a natural-language code generator for those who have an idea but don't wish to learn programming in order to see it realized.

Steele is planning to launch a crowdfunding campaign for the Cyber Fidget in the near future, with interested parties invited to sign up on Kickstarter to be notified when the campaign goes live. Additional information is available on the Cyber Fidget website.