With over 76 million units sold worldwide Tamagotchi was one of the most popular toys of the 90s. In this video we are going to build our own digital pet using Arduino, an Arduino Tamagotchi clone. There is a lot to cover so let’s get started!

Intro to the Arduino Tamagotchi Clone

Hello guys, I am Nick and welcome to educ8s.tv a channel that is all about DIY electronics projects with Arduino, Raspberry Pi, ESP8266 and other popular boards. Subscribe to the channel now if you don’t want to miss any future video.

In this video we will be making this: An Arduino Tamagotchi clone, the Tamaguino! As you can see on the small OLED display we take care of a small dinosaur. Using the meters, like the hunger meter, the happy or the discipline meter we can determine how healthy and well behaved the dinosaur is. We can feed the dinosaur, play with it, visit the doctor when it gets sick and many more things. As you can see, the game offers great features and animations. It is a very addictive toy, I remember playing with a Tamagotchi for months when I was a kid. I still remember the day that my first Tamagotchi died. This project brings back so many memories from my childhood and that’s why I decided to build one.

This project is developed by Alojz, a friend from Serbia. He has done an amazing job. I discovered his work a few months ago. He has built a website where he shares everything about this project. The code, the schematic diagram, even a 3D printed enclosure for it. He has done a fantastic job in this project. Even if you are not interested in building the project, study the code. Alojz is a very skilled developer so you are going to learn a lot from his code.

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PROJECT PAGE
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https://alojzjakob.github.io/Tamaguino/

 

The project is really simple and easy to build. The parts needed in order to build this project are the following:

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WHERE TO BUY
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Arduino Pro Mini: https://educ8s.tv/part/ArduinoProMini

OLED Display: https://educ8s.tv/part/OLED096

Push Buttons: https://educ8s.tv/part/Buttons

Speaker: https://educ8s.tv/part/SmallSpeaker

Switch: http://bit.ly/Switch10PCS

LiPo Charging board: http://bit.ly/LiPoCharging

150mAh LiPo Battery: http://bit.ly/LiPo150

Prototyping Board: http://bit.ly/PrototypingBoard5x7

FTDI programmer: https://educ8s.tv/part/FTDI

Full disclosure: All of the links above are affiliate links. I get a small percentage of each sale they generate. Thank you for your support!

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The cost of the electronics is less than 15$! If you are going to 3D print the enclosure you are also going to need two rolls of wood filament. I used FormFutura’s Easy Wood Birch and Coconut filaments. For the enclosure we need about 100gr of material, so it will cost us around 5$.So the total cost of the project is around 20$!

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FILAMENTS
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FormFutura Coconut: http://bit.ly/WoodFilamentCoconut

FormFutura Birch: http://bit.ly/WoodFilamentBirch

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ENCLOSURE FILES
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Alojz’s Enclosure: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2120692
Nick’s Enclosure: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2374552

Even though I really like the enclosure that Alojz provides I decided not to use it for two reasons. It was the first time I was building something on a prototyping board, so building something so small was very difficult to me. Also, I really love 3D design so I would love to design my own enclosure. I used Fusion360 to design the enclosure and that’s the design I came up with. It consists of 5 parts, the base, the top cover and 3 buttons. It is not my best looking design but as I am building more projects and gain experience my designs will improve. You can find links for the files of both the enclosure designs in the description of the video.

Then it was time to 3D print the enclosure. I used two Wood filaments in order to print the enclosure. I used FormFutura’s EasyWood Coconut and Birch filaments. The enclosure uses around 70gr of filament, so it will cost you around 5$ if you print at home. You can find links for the filaments in the description of the video. As you may have noticed I use wood filaments in every project! I really love the texture and the color of wood filaments. So, after about 3 hours all the parts were printed. Then it was time to sand them using fine sand paper, a tedious and time consuming process. After the sanding process was over I applied wood varnish to all the parts and let them dry for 24 hours. The result was great! The parts look so cool with the varnish applied. Please don’t skip the sanding and varnishing process, it will make your projects look impressive.

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LIBRARIES
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? Arduino JSON: https://github.com/bblanchon/ArduinoJson
? Liquid Crystal for ESP8266: https://github.com/esp8266/Basic/tree/master/libraries/LiquidCrystal

 

As I final thought I think that this is a great project. A project that demonstrates that makers can now build almost anything! It took Alojz, the developer of the code about one week to write the code in his free time. Open software and hardware enable us to do things, that few years ago were impossible even to professionals!

Building this project was a great learning experience for me. It was the first time I was using a prototyping board and the first time I was using a LiPo battery in a project. Also, I designed this enclosure from scratch which was more difficult than I expected. To be honest I am not satisfied with enclosure, it is way too big for such a small display. That’s why I am thinking to replace this small 1” OLED with a bigger 2.4” display I have discovered. I think it will make the project much better. I would like this project to evolve into an Arduino game console. This project is good start. I would love to hear your opinion about this project. Do you have any improvement suggestions? Please post your comments in the comments section below and don’t forget to like the video if you find it interesting!

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