There also is a german project called Tonuino, which is quite similar and has lots of examples and documentation - they even designed a custom PCB which unfortunately is no longer available:
https://github.com/tonuino/TonUINO-TNG
Another rasperry focussed project that has a web interface is Phoniebox:
https://phoniebox.de/index-en.html
There also is a toniebox hack, which lets you setup a self-hosted content server:
I read through the whole thing and found it informative, LLM or not. To all AI low effort naysayers I think for a working parent this maybe would not have been possible to write in reasonable time without the aid of Claude.
Kudos to the author.
My kids got offer a toniebox this year, and when discovering the product I was so upset about this locked and privacy nightmare I brought it back to the seller for a refund and started to look for alternatives (got time, still very young). Will check it out!
Fast dopamin? Did you read the article? I did. I think he mentions spending 3 months on this. Going from zero to hero on a project like this failed on 3 attempts, because figuring stuff out from forums alone is just way too hard.
Sorry man, but I really don't see your problem. A guy made something and wrote an article about making it. Did LLMs help? Yes, he's quite open about that. So what?!
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!
3D printed figurines on top of a box which would activate museum style narration and multimedia. It was based on a Raspberry PI though which is different from this project but in many ways, it was the same.
I wonder if it would be a good base to create a kids phone / yogurt-cup telephone: no screen, no keyboard, just a box and figurines, and to call someone up you put the figurine on the box. It could be boxes-only (only people with a box can call or be called) or it could be more general: kids only have boxes and figurines, but the machine is able to call actual phones.
I think even as an adult I would enjoy that.
had to stop reading from that point onwards.
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"?
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!
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.