Raising a Robot
Follow
Son of a bot · a six-week experiment

The best way to understand AI is to raise one.

He’ll grow up with robots. He should know how they’re made. So my son and I are teaching a small round device to listen, talk and remember. He decides what it does. We build it together.

Six weeks · 18 workshops · Sat mornings, Sun afternoons, Wed at six.

See the 18 workshopsWhat it becomes →
A boy sitting on a rug in the sun, smiling at the companion on his wrist
“Dad, can it say my name?”

Why build it together

The kid who builds it owns it. And the hours.

A robot from a box is a toy. One decided at the kitchen table is his. And the time it takes is ours.

He decides

The magic word, the voice, the jobs, the face. I don’t overrule. I type.

Real hands, real AI

Real firmware, a real speech → model → voice loop. He learns by holding it, breaking it and fixing it.

Confidence, not consumption

Every workshop ends with something that didn’t work an hour ago. Eighteen small wins in a row.

Time with a deadline

Three slots a week, on the calendar, with a streak that resets if either of us skips.

The device

Eight parts. We wake them up one at a time.

A small round device already has a screen, two ears, a voice, a brain, a memory card and room for a battery. Out of the box it shows a flower and the time, and knows nothing about him.

Six weeks of programming turn it into his. He holds it and picks the words. I type.

The round device face-up, its screen showing a flower and the time
The face, as it shipped: a flower and a clock.
The device plugged into a laptop, its screen lit with a grid of demo apps
First plug-in. Someone else’s apps, for one more day.

  • The face

    Workshop 2

    A round screen the size of a big coin. That's where the face lives.

  • The ears

    Workshop 3

    Two tiny microphones, so it can hear you from across the room.

  • The voice

    Workshop 3

    A little speaker. It talks back.

  • The brain

    Workshop 10

    A chip that runs our code and can call the cloud when it's stuck.

  • The memory card

    Workshop 5

    A card full of stories it keeps inside.

  • The battery

    Workshop 16

    So it can come with us instead of living on the desk.

  • The clock

    Workshop 12

    It knows what time it is, even when it's asleep.

  • The wobble sensor

    Later

    It can tell when you pick it up or shake it.

Swipe or tap for more

From the bench

Session one: unboxing, and wiping it clean.

The box, the first plug-in, the moment it forgot everything it came with.

A hand holding open a small cardboard shipping box with two smaller boxes inside, on a glass garden table
Saturday morning, on the terrace. The box is smaller than he expected.
Two plastic cases open on the table: one with the round device, one with a bare circuit board, next to a coffee mug
Two cases. One with a face, one without. He wanted to know why.
The round device sitting in its foam-lined case, screen off, with a bag of cables beside it
Screen off, no name, knows nothing yet.
The device on its side showing the row of pins and the port along its edge
The back. Those pins are how it talks to the outside world.
The device in its open case on a desk mat, with a pencil and a sheet of drawings behind it
Inside, at the desk. The drawings are his first designs for the body.
The device plugged into a laptop by USB, its screen showing a grid of demo apps
Plugged in for the first time. This is what it came with. Not for long.

The build log

We post as we go.

Follow @GoldenbergLior on X →
Lior
@GoldenbergLior · 1 Sept

Soon: taking my Agents out to the real world.

5 replies7 likes
Lior
@GoldenbergLior · 31 Aug

Guess what just arrived in the package?

3 replies4 likes
Lior
@GoldenbergLior · 1 Sept

Soon: taking my Agents out to the real world.

5 replies7 likes
Lior
@GoldenbergLior · 31 Aug

Guess what just arrived in the package?

3 replies4 likes
Lior
@GoldenbergLior · 1 Sept

Soon: taking my Agents out to the real world.

5 replies7 likes
Lior
@GoldenbergLior · 31 Aug

Guess what just arrived in the package?

3 replies4 likes
Lior
@GoldenbergLior · 1 Sept

Soon: taking my Agents out to the real world.

5 replies7 likes
Lior
@GoldenbergLior · 31 Aug

Guess what just arrived in the package?

3 replies4 likes
A boy holding the Pip pendant worn on a soft cord necklace
Pip, the finished version. Ours will be messier.

Where the wire ends

Where the wire ends: something like Pip.

Pip is the companion we imagined first: screen-free, worn on the wrist, holding a real spoken conversation with a small child. Wake-word only, nothing stored, no camera, no ads. Ours is the same idea, with the kid who’ll wear it making the calls.

  • Same voice loop, same privacy rules.
  • His name, voice, jobs and body.
  • What we learn goes back into Pip.
See Pip →

The plan

Six weeks. Eighteen workshops. One wire to light up.

Each workshop has two lines: what we tell him, and what’s really going on under the hood.

The wire

0 of 18 done · 6 weeks · 3 slots a week
1WEEK 1234WEEK 2567WEEK 38910WEEK 4111213WEEK 5141516WEEK 61718
🔌👂🎙️🧠📓🧸

One medal per finished week.

🔌

Week 1 · Wake it up

By Wednesday it has a face and can hear us.

  1. 1Saturday morning

    Meet the board

    Take it out of the box, plug it in, and wipe everything off it so it's ours.

    ▸ Under the hood

    Unbox, enter download mode, erase_flash, check the eFuses are unburned.

  2. 2Sunday afternoon

    Hello, screen

    Put our own code on it and draw a face on the little screen.

    ▸ Under the hood

    First firmware flash. Something on the AMOLED that isn't the vendor demo.

  3. 3Wednesday 6pm

    Can you hear me?

    Talk into it, then make it play our voices back.

    ▸ Under the hood

    Mic + speaker through the ES8311 codec. Record, play back.

Swipe or tap for more
👂

Week 2 · Give it ears

Say the magic word and it tells a story.

  1. 4Saturday morning

    The magic word

    Pick a word. When we say it, it wakes up.

    ▸ Under the hood

    ESP-SR wake word running. Test it on a kid's voice, not just ours.

  2. 5Sunday afternoon

    The memory card

    Give it a card full of stories to keep inside.

    ▸ Under the hood

    Format the TF card, load the starter audio, write the manifest.

  3. 6Wednesday 6pm

    Tell me a story

    Say the magic word, ask for a story, and it tells one.

    ▸ Under the hood

    Wake word → command → play cached story off the SD card.

Swipe or tap for more
🎙️

Week 3 · Give it a voice

It has a name, a character, and knows yours.

  1. 7Saturday morning

    Choose the voice

    Decide who lives inside it, and what they sound like.

    ▸ Under the hood

    One character, one voice. Generate the first batch with TTS.

  2. 8Sunday afternoon

    It knows my name

    Teach it to say your name out loud.

    ▸ Under the hood

    Fragment stitching — names, numbers, time of day assembled on device.

  3. 9Wednesday 6pm

    Ten words it knows

    Teach it words it can listen for, like 'story', 'game', 'again'.

    ▸ Under the hood

    Local command vocabulary. The command list is the curriculum.

Swipe or tap for more
🧠

Week 4 · Give it a brain

It answers things nobody taught it.

  1. 10Saturday morning

    Talking to the cloud

    Now it can answer things nobody taught it.

    ▸ Under the hood

    Live STT → LLM → TTS round trip over Wi-Fi. The core loop.

  2. 11Sunday afternoon

    Thinking face

    Make it look like it's thinking, so waiting isn't boring.

    ▸ Under the hood

    Fill the 1–2s cloud latency with a sound and an animation.

  3. 12Wednesday 6pm

    Morning and bedtime

    Give it two jobs: wake you up, and say goodnight.

    ▸ Under the hood

    Activity state machine — the two rituals end to end.

Swipe or tap for more
📓

Week 5 · Give it a memory

It remembers what you played, never what you said.

  1. 13Saturday morning

    The secret notebook

    It writes down what you played, but never what you said.

    ▸ Under the hood

    Append-only event log. Ring buffer, oldest overwritten. No raw audio.

  2. 14Sunday afternoon

    Phone home

    When it finds Wi-Fi, it sends the notebook home.

    ▸ Under the hood

    Sync agent → Supabase edge function. Push events, pull manifest diff.

  3. 15Wednesday 6pm

    New stories arrive

    It goes to sleep, and wakes up knowing new stories.

    ▸ Under the hood

    Content pull + OTA check. Loved a dragon story — next sync brings more.

Swipe or tap for more
🧸

Week 6 · Give it a body

Battery in, shell on, hand it to a real kid.

  1. 16Saturday morning

    Cut the cord

    Put the battery in so it can come with us.

    ▸ Under the hood

    LiPo in the case, AXP2101 charging, measure real runtime.

  2. 17Sunday afternoon

    Build the body

    Decide what it looks like, and make it that.

    ▸ Under the hood

    Minimal shell for the test. Room object first — the logs pick the form.

  3. 18Wednesday 6pm

    The big test

    Give it to a real kid. See if they come back to it.

    ▸ Under the hood

    Week-6 kid test. Day 3 return is the number that matters.

Swipe or tap for more

How we keep going

Coins, a streak, and photos of the mess.

Six weeks is long for a kid. So the plan is a game.

  1. 10

    Coins for every workshop

    10 coins the moment we press “We did it”. He decides what coins buy.

  2. 🔥

    A streak that can break

    25 bonus coins every 3 in a row. Skip one and it’s back to zero.

  3. 📸

    Photos of the mess

    Four per workshop plus a note: what happened, what broke, what was funny.

  4. 🧸

    A medal per finished week

    The last one only lights up after a real kid has kept it for three days.

Want to see what he builds next?

One email after each workshop: photos, what broke, what he decided.

Or follow the build on XJoin the Pip pilot families