KOI | Devpost

koi!
pong mini game (for enrichment)
koi on da bottle
locked in
wires

Inspiration

Our good friend Amelia here went on a grand journey to Montreal with a suitcase full of mystical and magical wonders, yet devoid of water bottle(s). Unsurprisingly, she says "my head hurts" and "I feel dizzy". Unsurprisingly, this is because she did not drink water. She does not like drinking water. Now, on the other hand, Amelia is very competitive. She plays competitive Tetris, has a competitive map app, and a competitive toothbrush. So... if we gamified drinking water... there would be no more Montreal Incidents :)

What it does

KOI is a Tamagotchi water bottle that detects tilts and movements on your water bottle to track drinking activity, which is then used to sustain a virtual pet! Koi is a koi fish (shocker), and he and his buddies Soy (soy sauce) and Joy (rock) spend lots of time hanging around in a neat little pond. It's YOUR responsibility to make sure they stay hydrated by drinking water from your bottle regularly. Drink water to replenish their HP, pet them to keep them content, and play games to keep their minds sharp.

How we built it

We built our project on a headless Raspberry Pi 5 using Python, attaching a gyroscope to detect bottle tilts and movements. The project also features two push buttons as controls, similar to a classic Tamagotchi. Your virtual friends are displayed on a small touchscreen monitor. ALL of these (yes twin, ALL of them) are strapped to a super sleek, high-tech, everyday, convenient water bottle.

Challenges we ran into

HARDWARE! BROKE! We fried our OLED screen and lost a lot of time trying to get it to connect properly. Ultimately, we had to pivot to a larger touchscreen monitor, which, while having a lot more capabilities, took away from the retro Tamagotchi vibe we were looking for. As well, lots of challenges with installing dependencies on a headless Raspberry Pi.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A functioning tilt sensor that logs drinks, with functioning pet logic! Super cute buddies :) We also kept most of the retro feel we were going for, keeping push buttons for inputs instead of just using the onboard touchscreen on the monitor.

What we learned

Prepare backups when working with hardware! Computers are delicate... We also learned so much this weekend about hardware, sensors, circuits, and interfacing through a terminal, and it was really refreshing (like the water we're encouraging you to drink) to step outside our comfort zone of pure software.

What's next for KOI

Order another OLED screen and make our mini retro Tamagotchi dreams come true! Beyond that, we’re thinking about syncing hydration stats to a mobile app, adding multiplayer pets to water fountains/dispenses, and maybe building a leaderboard to trigger Amelia’s competitive instincts even more :P

Lots of love from KOI and friends :)