The Cassagotchi Is a 3D-Printable, Arduino Nano-Powered Tamagotchi Clone You Can Build Yourself
A plastic egg houses your very own digital pet, like it's the 1990s all over again.
Mononymous maker Cass has built a do-it-yourself pocket pet inspired by the classic Tamagotchi — and has released everything you need to build your own "Cassagotchi," powered by an Arduino Nano R3 or compatible microcontroller board.
"This is a Tamagotchi emulator running on an Arduino Nano inside a 3D printed chassis and shell," Cass says of the oversized egg-shaped digital creature. "This is a Nano-adapted version of ArduinoGotchi, based on GPL-licensed firmware by Gary Kwok, modified for a compact handheld build. Please note: I am a total 3D-modelling noob and expect that many improvements could be made to these files. I would only recommend attempting this project if you have a passing knowledge of Arduino coding, circuitry, and 3D modelling."
Bandai's Tamagotchi hit shop shelves in Japan back in 1996, reaching the US a year later — and quickly becoming the must-have gift of the late 90s. The egg-shaped gadgets placed a simulated pet on a single-color LCD display, and put the user in charge of feeding, cleaning, and playing with it via simple button-presses. Ignore the pet for too long, and it dies — though a quick poke of the reset button will bring it back to life with only a slight feeling of guilt remaining.
The Cassagotchi is designed around an Arduino Nano R3 running a tweaked version of Gary Kwok's open-source Tamagotchi emulator. The familiar egg-shaped housing, 3D-printed, also hosts a lithium-polymer battery with charging module, a 168×64 OLED display panel, and a trio of push-button switches — providing the same interaction capabilities as the original Tamagotchi. "D5 [Digital Pin 5] is coded to be a manual save button," Cass notes. "Adding that would allow you to extend the auto-save time length, saving EEPROM [write cycles]. I was going to do that, but ran out of space."
The full project guide is available on Instructables, alongside 3D print files for the housing and a bill of materials for the parts. A build video is embedded above, and also available on the Chaos Theory YouTube channel.