I built a small digital aquarium using Arduino IDE

[u/CommunityFan89]

Components are a waveshare esp32c6 1.47 touchless board, a latching switch, and a lipo battery I recycled from a vape.

I prompted AI for the arduino sketch code, bugfixed for a while until it looked and functioned how I wanted, had it render the fish and plants with math geometry so no AI art stolen or generated.

I soldered a couple jumper wires to the waveshare’s 5v and ground pins. I soldered the wires up, wired ground to battery, wired 5v to latching switch (making sure its off when soldering), then wired the + switch to the battery.

Open source code will be available on my github soon.

Edit: It's alive! Sparkadium/Digital-Aquarium: For the Waveshare ESP32C6-1.47-LCD :)

[u/gbatx]

Does it work in landscape mode? Would be a great addition to small models, like trains, doll houses or lego buildings!

[u/CommunityFan89 → u/gbatx]

It wouldn't be difficult to make it have a landscape mode. I'll get that implemented before publishing to github. :)

[u/jlangager]

So the animation is purely via Arduino IDE? I've been playing around with Raspberry pi + waveshare displays, using Godot to program the game play. But this seems waaaay more compact.

[u/CommunityFan89 → u/jlangager]

Yes! The whole thing, with 5 different fish tank modes and optional landscape/portrait toggle, is 192KB before compiling.

[u/jlangager → u/CommunityFan89]

Crazy.

[u/jlangager → u/jlangager]

Thanks for sharing... genuinely helpful to me.

[u/kaylee716]

What is this, an aquarium for fish fry?

Jk, it's cool

[u/fatmanny1901 → u/kaylee716]

https://giphy.com/gifs/OCMGLUo7d5jJ6

[u/zagriza]

Man, that's so cool, great job! Looks amazing

[u/0miker0]

I like it! If it’s Waveshare board then why all the wires?

[u/CommunityFan89 → u/0miker0]

I posted this to another subreddit and got trolled for it being usb and not battery powered, so I soldered the battery and latching switch on it. I'm not good with wire management tbh haha

[u/guru242 → u/CommunityFan89]

I like it. Good job. Forget the trolls and keep building and sharing.

[u/Dickulture]

Good ol' fish screensaver from the 90s. I may need to steal this one for myself as Macintosh aren't pocket sized and it's impractical to drag my Quadra 650, LCD monitor, and a portable gas generator just to watch the fish on the bus

[u/Xsurv1veX]

Please publish to GitHub!

[u/CommunityFan89 → u/Xsurv1veX]

It's on github now! :)

[u/Xsurv1veX → u/CommunityFan89]

Thanks!

[u/drugquests]

This makes me want to do a mini feeding frenzy game on it 🤓

[u/NuncioBitis → u/drugquests]

Like you can throw in body parts?

[u/drugquests → u/NuncioBitis]

It's an old computer game

[u/nshire → u/drugquests]

More of an Insaniquarium guy myself

[u/SomnambulisticTaco → u/nshire]

Ridiculous Fishing for me

[u/motofoto]

That’s really cool. 

[u/anz507]

Intersting project, saved the post for github link

[u/CommunityFan89 → u/anz507]

I updated the post with the github link :)

[u/anz507 → u/CommunityFan89]

Sweet!

[u/nshire]

Did you happen to buy those at Micro Center?

[u/xincailiao]

漂亮

[u/Jerrygalspy]

This is so cool, you gotta build a little enclosure or set to embed it into

[u/LIS_YAKI]

Cool!!

[u/qufur]

This looks so cool! Nice work :)

[u/JustARegularPawn]

Dunno how i feel about the ai part, but i do love the effect! Wanna share how to do it?

[u/CommunityFan89 → u/JustARegularPawn]

For the most part I described to the AI the parameters of the aquatic environments I wanted (a realistic tank with small math-based fish, as well as other modes with different fish not shown in this video), compared two different AI models (claude opus 5.5 and chatgpt-astra) how it looked and how the fish/plants moved, and told it which device I'd be using as a display. The bulk of effort from me was soldering on the battery and latching switch to the board.

[u/JustARegularPawn → u/CommunityFan89]

Dear Sir, I can't wait for you to publish the project on github. kudos to you

[u/CommunityFan89 → u/JustARegularPawn]

I just updated the post with the github link :)

[u/TopSearch4810]

Will your fingers smell like fish?

[u/deletetemptemp]

https://giphy.com/gifs/kRUjmx07uChkyChxHb
Thumb

[u/This-Artichoke9052]

Why???

[u/enigmamonkey → u/This-Artichoke9052]

Probably for fun.

Because he can.