Engineer Reacts to PewDiePie’s $1B Tamagotchi

PewDiePie just hit us with his new billiondoll master plan to build a wait for it, wellness tomagotchi. I mean, it's better than a memecoin. In the latest in his new tech arc, Peudes is putting on his engineering hat to walk us through a design for an indie product he cooked up that honestly would probably crush on Etsy. What's interesting though is his new device is powered by a platform called Raspberry Pi that I've been covering for almost 10 years and I'm pretty passionate about it. So, naturally, I have thoughts. Let's take a look. How's it going, bros? My name is PewDiePie. Check it out. New camera. What do you guys think? Pristine. This is actually, if you can believe it, this is filmed with my camera. I made this camera. All right. Honestly, which one is better? So, right off the bat, props for making a camera. Can be a little cumbersome on the Raspberry Pi ecosystem. You're definitely not talking 4K in most cases. Um, but it's a good starter project for people, which is to get the Raspi cam going on their Raspberry Pi. I want to tell you guys how I how this all came to be. You may be wondering why I'm in my car. You see, it all started with me selling my old car, my Tesla, and I had dog mode on it, which I find really helpful. So, I thought, screw it. I'll do something better. I'll add a camera in here, cuz the Tesla didn't have that. I can check the temperature and the humidity, and that way at least I know my dogs aren't getting scorched to death while I'm away for a minute. Why does the camera charge me monthly to use it? Features pest. Why does a humidity sensor want my private information? So, I really like that he emphasizes this point because this is basically the sentiment of everyone in our space, which is why does everything have a subscription? We've seen toothbrushes that literally have subscriptions now. And then why does everything have to be connected to the cloud uh in order to work and without a network, it's basically dumb. Like, I don't need my dishwasher to connect to the internet. So, um preach and I hope big tech hears this. Use a Raspberry Pi. You probably heard of these already. It's a single board computer. And the best part, it runs Linux. Yeah. And then for the uninitiated, Raspberry Pi is just a whole platform of uh open-source microcontrollers. Company was founded by Jason Staithm and uh they really have top tier engineers uh and um tends to be better quality than you might get out of China for the most part. Um, so really good ecosystem to build on and has been wildly successful. The other thing is they're very cheap, so their margins are quite low. When this guy first came out and this is a full computer right here, so this can run an operating system and uh most programs that you'd like. This was $35. So it's kind of groundbreaking when computers were uh orders of magnitude more expensive. And that's when I discovered glorious SSH. SSH, which stand for secure shell protocol. Secure shell is basically how you make yourself feel like a hacker. No, it's how you log into these things remotely, but you have to know CLI. Um, and network chuck actually is a really good resource for learning more about that. SSH is basically a way to connect to your uh computer remotely. The fact that you can communicate with a computer just with your keyboard, I feel like I'm a wizard. I'm typing spells with commands for some reason. And this is not Linux fault. It's not the fault that I'm on Linux. The program didn't work. Your program didn't work. Welcome to my world. It's not Linux fault. Actually, it's actually good that I'm on Linux because I can solve this problem easily. I just have to do it manually. And let's BLK mount that drive. Yeah. Yeah, I mean basically what he's getting at is as you move your development into more nent technologies such as single board computers and believe it or not beyond this there's MCUs which is like ESP32s and things like that which is straight Objective C code. Um the tooling just gets worse and worse. So like things that we take for granted like plugging in a USB cable or um a hard drive or some of those basic utilities can actually require quite a bit of setup just to get to work. And um so one of my hopes is that uh we get more AI in the MCU space and the tooling gets better so that we can develop a lot faster like cuz even like displaying an image on an ESP32 which on a normal computer we just take for granted uh you literally have to like load the bit map array uh and it's um it's quite a trial just to get that to work and uh so anyways respect for anyone who's uh working in the space it is not easy so I use a program called Raspby Cam and Raspby Cam was beautiful, man. It worked perfectly. We had a such a good thing

going. Me and Raspby Cam. Can you imagine one day waking up and your best friend is just gone? One reboot and Raspby Cam was just poof. I didn't even get to say goodbye. I don't know what happened. I don't want to use libcam. Goddamn Lib Cam. is funny because like some of these libraries and dependencies um you build into your application and you start to rely on them and then they get deprecated and you have to move to uh some other utility which has different quirks and things like that. So it's kind of just like learning a new platform uh is always um fun here a lot of trial and error and I finally got it working. This felt like a huge win. So when you are working on these things because everything is so tedious when you finally get something to work it's like the best feeling in the world. It's like pure bliss. I remember a time I tried to get an Ethereum minor running on one of these and um basically to uh run a crypto miner you need to download the blockchain so you can like run validations and stuff like that. And this just doesn't have the space for that. And I remember mounting virtual drives and it was just um it was uh an exercise in massochism, but we got it to work. Sheer stubbornness made this happen. But I finally had my streaming live feed. That's what I needed. Huge win. I then added the DHT sensor, which is uh measures temperature and humidity. So I actually have uh some extra spare DHT sensors here. So, these are humidity sensors. And then through the GPIO pins, you can connect these to the Raspberry Pi. These are a lot of fun. In fact, I created a uh I call it the cyber clock. And what it does is it reads the time, it gives you the weather, but it also gives you the humidity. Um, this is actually real 3D printed stainless steel, but you have a DHT 11 sensor under there. So, these are quite ubiquitous in this space. Come on. Come on, buddy. Load. I know you can do it. Come on. Come on. I think it's thinking. I added a battery. I 3D printed a case. Bada bing, bada boom. And poof, my dog spy cam was complete. Yeah. So, this space pairs lovely with 3D printing. Um, for instance, like this device here, this was 3D printed. This is a radio walkie-talkie. Now, this isn't a Raspberry Pi. This is an MCU, which is like the level below Raspberry Pi. So, it doesn't run full Linux. Um, has less compute, but less energy draw, more portable, etc. Look at this thing. It's adorable. I love it. I showed it in my last video and like no one cared. I was like, "Look, I made this camera. Hint hint. Do you want me to talk more about it? " Anyway, I think it's cool. Me and Mara went on a road trip. I got to test out the camera. I mean, me and Marca stopped to have a bite. We could check that the dogs were sound and safe and comfortable and no stress involved. I love it. He could just buy a Furbo. These exist, but I understand it's more fun to make it yourself. A little side note here. I don't know if you guys have noticed this, but anytime tech reviewers on YouTube when they review a tiny speaker, they all do this, and I don't understand why. They go, "Oh, it doesn't sound bad at all for its size. " If it's tiny, it's bad by default. Okay, listen my brethren. My brother, tiny isn't good. We have to accept this. Physics is physics. Brother, come here. It's okay. The thing is, you don't want to sleep on the fact that tiny has an inherent viral aspect to it, right? One of the reasons uh this was so popular is a tiny computer. Uh it was the size of a credit card, right? And so that piques people's interest. I was inspired by old handheld radios. I wanted to have like this handheld feel to it. Handheld radios, anyone? We're all about the radio life here. Most of the time I spent 3D printing. And here's me uh breaking my filament sensor while trying to clear some clogged filament. That's not good. Come on. So, I don't 3D print because I actually think it gives off VOCC's and stuff like that. Um, with 3D printing, you're basically turning your home into a factory. Uh, and OSHA is not there to make sure that you're not poisoning yourself. You're probably fine. But anyways, I use um outsourcing, remote printing. Um, so I send my designs to uh usually like a company out of Shenzen or something like that and they have better uh equipment and uh materials than I do and then they ship me back um my models.

I didn't know it at the time. Anytime I try to print the filament kept going, "No, you can't print. There's something stuck in there. " And I go, "Oh, is it? " Cuz I just cleaned it. I know for a fact there's nothing stuck in there. Yeah, this is another reason I don't 3D print. I don't want to deal with that stuff, let alone whatever you're inhaling. I think people are going to focus a lot more on air quality in the coming years. And I think it's going to be kind of uncovered that some of these filaments we get from random places uh are pretty toxic. I did a video on that and no one wanted to hear it. So, it's an idea whose time has not come yet. I kept getting gas lit by my 3D print there. I know there's nothing in there. I actually tried to look up if I can SSH into my printer and you can if you hack it. I was this close to doing it cuz I was like, well, I just needed to shut up and print. Like, it's not an issue. Yeah. I mean, you can SSH into anything with an OS basically. Like, you can SSH into your Ubiquiti routers, any of your computers, your phones, and cables kept falling off everywhere. I kept resoldering them so they would stick, but it just kept happening and I kept going. This is not human. This whole video is just me complaining about troubleshooting. Someone needs to know my pain. Yeah, soldering is a whole another level of uh DIY. I remember soldering this guy and um yeah, filament flux hitting me. Um inhaling miscellaneous substances and not recreational ones. Uh yeah, soldering can be quite of a quite a bit quite a challenge, but um it's very rewarding when it works. I kept going. It's not human. I need to save space. I have to solder them all. And he's soldering on a Raspberry Pi, which is pretty big. Try soldering on a cow. Those things are tiny. In fact, I have one. Uh so a chow is just that little board right there. And uh that I mean it's so easy to mess it up. I realize they have USB ports. It's okay to use the USB ports. I don't have to fight every battle, man. Yeah, there's making things work and then there's making it production optimized and they're very different. And if it's just a proof of concept, just make it work. That mean it was pretty much plugandplay with the microphone. And I'm actually really glad Msay pushed me to do this because I found this open-source software called Vosque. Super cool. It runs voice transcription locally. So it's completely offline. Yeah. So you'd be shocked what you can run locally on these things like Llama, Lava, small language models, um text to speech. These can do a lot of that stuff like pretty effectively. It's not going to be state-of-the-art, but um you can certainly get by with that. This happened because I was going to use an e- in display. E- in displays are amazing. They run on super low power. They have this sort of pixelated retro feel to them, which I really like. Yep. E- in displays are pretty amazing. In fact, this one that you're looking at right now, the screen is not on right now. Screen's actually off. And it only draws power when it refreshes the screen. So, opens up kind of a whole new world in terms of uh you know, low energy draw and things like that. But I ordered this one and it was way smaller than I thought. I was like, h that's not going to work. But I can use it to just test out how I want to execute this idea. Then Marcia glanced at it and she was like, oh, it's so cute and tiny. And I was like, my brother, maybe tiny isn't so bad after all. Told you tiny is where it's at. If you want that inherent virality aspect, go tiny. Seeing the little avatar guy on this tiny screen made me think of Tamagotchi. You know those '90s virtual pets that everyone had? Oh god, I remember Tamagotchis and annoying my parents so we could go buy, you know, collect all the colors or what have you and then you'd feed them and then inevitably you'd forget to feed them and they would die. I don't Yeah, I don't know how these things it's like on the level of like a Furby, you know? It's just uh one of those uh toy trends that um kind of sweeps through the uh the population. I love the look of Tamagotchis. I love the nostalgic feel of Tamagotchis. So, that's when I came in with a billion dollar idea. What if instead of you taking care of Tamagotchi, Tamagotchi take care of you? or that way. All right, here it is in all its glory. I couldn't fit the

battery. It's like with a magnet. This is the on button. It takes quite a while to boot. I'm not going to lie to you. Not a huge fan of the color scheme. Uh, and the print could use some work, but it definitely has that uh oneofone Etsy type vibe. You're not going to find this at Oh, there we go. Man, Marta did so good with the art. Get a tan cuz it's hot and sunny. So, it's 29° now and then in 5 hours it's going to be uh 22° and cloudy. This is actually really helpful. He's telling you to wear t-shirt and shorts. Basically, like if it was really hot, he would technically be naked. Uh if it's really cold, he wears like a hoodie. I'll show Marcia showing the art cuz obviously now it's not cold. But yeah, I think it looks great. The meditation screen. So, you can select how long you want to meditate. Let's say 10 minutes seems reasonable. You start it and then it should start with like breathe. Yeah. This is a side note, but I love that everyone thinks you need an app to meditate. It's like the biggest scam ever. The whole point of meditation is to not do anything. Doesn't need any bells or whistles. Love it. Live, laugh, love it. So proud of it. Even though, you know, this is far from finished or even being anything practical to actually use, I wanted to just challenge myself to try my best. Always wanted to invent stuff, but I never had the time and the skill or honestly just the patience. This is kind of stuff I would love to build with Bern when he's older if he has some kind of crazy idea or interest in it at all. I don't know. There's actually a lot of YouTubers who um essentially built their channel as an excuse to spend more time with their kids. Um Deep Pocket Monster, Pat Flynn, um the Outdoor Boys. Uh so I, you know, I I understand the um wanting to find synergies between, you know, what you can do, what your interest, where you spend your time, and uh finding some overlap with that and uh your kids interest. So I respect that. Yeah. So overall, um kudos. I mean, clearly, you know, whatever he does, he geeks out on and tends to be pretty successful. And um these projects are like, you know, building blocks for uh a lot of the um potential stuff you might get into in this space. So, um no, what he built wasn't easy. Uh and it, you know, from one engineer to another, kudos. The screen's still not loading. I think the problem is uh I changed my Wi-Fi password so I can't connect to the internet. You live, you learn. So for me at least, it's pretty exciting when a big YouTuber gets involved in the niche that I'm passionate about like PewDiePie or Mark Robber with Arduino. And if you want to see the latest in the indie tech space, check out this next video. Thanks.