Sean Hollister reported turning a Waveshare development board into a pendant connected to Meta Muse, then adding spoken replies, phone-camera controls and a pet-care game. The project shows what one builder customized with Meta’s DIY software route; it is separate from the retail Muse Charm.
How the DIY Muse pendant worked
Hollister used a Waveshare ESP32-S3 1.75C board and Claude Code to modify the software. His changes included a screen for conversation history, a British voice from ElevenLabs, remote controls for his phone’s camera, multiple avatars and a pocket-watch face. He also added a video player and a pet-care minigame.
The game let the pet eat, play, sleep and bathe. Hunger, boredom and dirt each had four levels. Hollister said treats made the pet dirtier and too much play made it tired.
Those were custom features in his project, not factory features of the Waveshare board or established features of Muse Charm. His camera controls used a phone’s camera: the pendant itself did not have a camera or 5G, according to his account.
What the Waveshare board brings to the project
Waveshare lists these specifications for the ESP32-S3-Touch-AMOLED-1.75C:
| Component | Specification |
| Display | 1.75-inch AMOLED touchscreen, 466 × 466 pixels |
| Processor | ESP32-S3R8 dual-core, up to 240 MHz |
| Memory and storage | 8 MB PSRAM and 32 MB Flash |
| Wireless connectivity | 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n) and Bluetooth 5 LE |
| Audio and connection | Dual microphones, speaker and USB-C |
Waveshare also lists ESP-IDF and Arduino as development environments. The board’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth provide wireless connections, while its screen, microphones and speaker supply the basic parts for a small voice-and-avatar interface. See Waveshare’s specifications for the exact board.
The stock setup had limits
In Hollister’s account, the initial software treated speech as input for transcription rather than speaking its replies aloud. It showed only a few words at a time, offered one Jolly avatar and did not automatically discover smart-home devices. He added speech and conversation history, and reported that server response times varied. A one-second minimum audio filter helped prevent the push-to-talk input from stopping too early.
Meta’s DIY SDK does not define the retail Charm
Meta’s Muse Gadgets program provides open-source SDKs for DIY projects using ESP32 boards or Raspberry Pi/Linux devices. Meta says the SDKs and firmware use the Apache 2.0 license and come without warranty. The featured hardware is made and sold by other companies, which Meta does not endorse or warrant; Meta also warns that tinkering can brick boards or void their warranties.
That software support gives builders a route to connect their own hardware to Muse. It does not establish that the retail Muse Charm will use the same hardware, offer the same custom features or provide the same programming access.
