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Show HN: Marelleo, an open-source story box I built for my kids using ESP32

29 points foOg 3 days ago 11 comments

foOg 3 days ago | parent

Hi Hacker News!

I wanted to give my three kids a screenless story box (inspired by the Toniebox gesture) but I was deeply annoyed by the closed ecosystem and subscription-like models of commercial alternatives.

So, despite knowing absolutely nothing about electronics three months ago, I decided to build one myself using an ESP32, an NFC reader, and a Bambu Lab printer. I learned everything the hard way, from accidentally creating short circuits to routing 491 tracks by hand on my first custom PCB with KiCad (and using Claude to double-check my math).

The box serves its own local web page to upload MP3s/M4As, streams web radios, and handles self-updates over Wi-Fi with a built-in safety net in case the network stack crashes.

Everything is fully open-source (firmware, KiCad files, 3D models under MIT license) on GitHub: link in the article

I’d love to hear your thoughts, feedback on the PCB routing, or answer any questions about the build!

Muhammad523 23 minutes ago | parent

Please don't use any LLM to write about your projects in the future.

tvbusy 6 minutes ago | parent

I'm planning something like this. I already have Home Assistant with Music Assistant working, so playing radio and music and audiobooks in rooms are already possible with my phone. I plan to add ESPHome device with NFC reader to trigger plays so it's easy for the kids to use it. Just need to find where I left my roll of 50 NFC stickers.

One suggestion: In my opinion, kids nowadays are very familiar with charging devices with USB-C. Powering the device with USB-C will be much easier. Worse case scenario, I'll use some small portable power bank and place it inside.

armcat 40 minutes ago | parent

First off - well done, this is amazing. Secondly, it's a fascinating read how you basically figured it out, one mistake at a time, like not connecting or fastening the battery correctly. This is the way! We make mistakes and figure things out in our journey to make something interesting, and learn along the way.

rampatra 36 minutes ago | parent

I am mostly into software my whole life. I want to dabble with hardware and electronics in the future and this post taught me many things that’ll be very useful when I do.

Tnx for writing every bit of the building process in an easy to understand way and also open sourcing it.

I liked the look of your box too. Keep up!

stavros 34 minutes ago | parent

This seems like an interesting project but the Claude writing rubs me the wrong way. I couldn't finish it, unfortunately, but props for building it!

armcat 22 minutes ago | parent

I absolutely hate AI writing as well, but I suspect since the author is French, and the underlying code in their GitHub project [1] uses a lot of French naming, that it was more of a translation aid.

[1] https://github.com/Zebra-Rodeo/marelleo

Muhammad523 24 minutes ago | parent

There are some ugly tell tale signs of AI writing here: No screen, no menu, no parent [...]

You’re not buying a player, you’re buying a subscription [...]

I particularly hate the first one, don't AI sloppers notice how horrible it is to read "No x, no y, no z"?

sendgeetikamail 18 minutes ago | parent

Great job, this is really inspiring. How do you create the content for each of your kids?