The Purr-fect ESP32 Portable Dev Tool

Makers have an abundance of resources available to them today that make it possible to whip together a handheld computer, smart home controller, or just about any other custom electronic gadget you can imagine, and you can build them quickly and inexpensively. However, the available hardware tends to be in the form of a bare circuit board.

That’s fine for a project that sits on your desk, but if you want to carry it around or put it in your pocket, that’s not going to work out so well. Not only does it look bad, but it is also susceptible to damage or getting shorted out by a conductive surface. So if you want a more polished DIY device, you’ll need to shop around for suitable all-in-one kits — unless you want to do the work of designing a PCB, microsoldering, and building an enclosure on your own.

A product called MeowKit that was recently launched on Kickstarter could be the perfect tool for many projects that require a polished, pocketable design. Designed specifically with makers and hackers in mind, MeowKit aims to provide the development board experience with a consumer-grade look and feel. The device features a compact unibody enclosure with a CNC-machined 6061 aluminum loop, a 2-inch IPS display, built-in speaker, vibration motor, buttons, and a microSD slot — all wrapped into a rugged, pocket-sized form factor that’s ready to use out of the box.

MeowKit is built around an ESP32-S3 microcontroller running fully open-source firmware. Rather than forcing users into a single application or requiring a full reflash for every change, MeowKit introduces a multi-app launcher and file-based plugin system. Applications live on the SD card as self-contained Lua modules, which can be installed or removed simply by copying folders over USB mass storage mode. No toolchains, no reflashing — just drag, drop, and run.

The device can be used for a wide range of use cases. It supports AI chat and desktop control using popular large language models, complete with speech recognition, text-to-speech, and even voiceprint recognition. When connected to a PC, it can act as a controller that automates mouse, keyboard, and window interactions, turning natural language commands into real actions on your desktop.

For security researchers and protocol hackers, MeowKit includes tools for BLE beacon experimentation, Wi-Fi network analysis, BadUSB-style HID emulation, infrared signal capture, and optional RF modules such as nRF24 and CC1101.

Hardware expansion is handled through an Arduino-compatible GPIO header with support for SPI, I²C, UART, and both 3.3 V and 5 V peripherals. Combined with an LVGL-based UI, Lua runtime, and a clean board support package, MeowKit offers an unusually polished development experience for an open platform.

The Kickstarter campaign was just recently fully funded, but you can still Late Pledge for rewards. MeowKit starts at $109.