A desk companion you can talk to.
The same pair of eyes living their own day — curious in the morning, bored by the afternoon, drowsy, then a nap — inside a small printed yeti that listens. Say a word and it answers. It recognises speech on itself: nothing is recorded, nothing is sent anywhere, and it works with no network at all.
Customise your Yeti
Plug it in and set it up right here — changes happen on your Eyes as you make them, and nothing is permanent until you press Save to Eyes. Not plugged in? Everything it does is described further down.
Customising needs the Web Serial API, available in Chrome, Edge and Opera on Windows, Mac, Linux and ChromeOS. Safari and Firefox don't support it, and phones and tablets can't do it at all. Open this page in Chrome or Edge on a computer.
1. Plug it in
Connect it with the USB cable, then press Connect and choose RP2040 Zero from the list your browser shows. Leave it plugged in while you customise.
1 How it listens
Your yeti recognises a small set of spoken words using a model that runs entirely on the device. Nothing is recorded and nothing is uploaded. No audio is stored, none is sent to us or anyone else, and none of it needs Wi-Fi — unplug the USB cable and it works exactly the same.
It waits for its name. The yeti ignores the room until it hears “hey yeti”. That is what stops it acting on the television. Say its name, wait for yes? on its screen, then say one command.
- Say “hey yeti”From about an arm's length, at a normal speaking volume. Its screen shows yes? and it listens for about six seconds.
- Say one wordIf it is confident, it does the thing. If it half heard you, it shows the word with a question mark and a draining bar.
- Answer yes or noWhile a question is on screen, only yes and no are heard — so a near miss can never cascade into the wrong action. Say nothing and it cancels itself.
It answers one command per wake, then goes back to waiting for its name. If it does not react, say its name again — a word that lands right on the edge of its listening window is missed rather than guessed at.
If it acts on things you did not say, choose Careful. If it keeps ignoring you, choose Eager.
2 The words it knows
One name, twelve commands, and five words you assign yourself.
| Say | It does |
|---|---|
| hey yeti | Wake up and listen for one command |
| red / green / blue | Solid colour |
| rainbow | Light show |
| brighter / dimmer | Turn the light up or down a step |
| time | Show the clock |
| goodnight | Go to sleep |
| stop | Settle down, stop what it is doing |
| yes / no | Answer a question |
Why these words, and not others? Because it listens on its own, with no help from a server, it knows a fixed vocabulary — and these were taught to it in your voice, through this microphone. That is what lets it know words like rainbow that no public recording set contains. It also means it is tuned to the person who set it up: a stranger will get worse results than you do.
Some pairs sound alike to a model this small — yes and red are the closest. If one keeps turning into the other, the sensitivity setting above is the first thing to try.
The clock needs setting. The yeti has no battery-backed clock, so until a browser tells it the time, time answers “no clock set”. This page sets it automatically whenever you connect — that is all it takes, and it lasts until the yeti loses power.
3 Your five words
Say a number and the yeti does whatever you have assigned to it. The word itself is fixed, but what it does is stored on the device and you can change it whenever you like — no update needed.
When one of these is recognised the yeti names it back to you — two: show — so you can always tell what it heard, not just what it did.
4 What it shows
The first choice: a creature, or a message board, or both.
5 What it says
It looks at you, then says something quietly. Rare is the point. Out of the box it uses its own two dozen lines; anything you write is mixed in alongside them.
Press Preview on any line to see it on your Eyes straight away.
6 How the eyes look
Square is how it arrived. The others are yours to try.
7 Its light
There is a colour LED on the board. Behind a window in the case it reads as a small lamp — and it can say what the screen cannot, like “asleep” rather than “switched off”.
Press one and watch the board — it starts immediately.
8 Panel setup — set once
For however the screen ended up mounted in your case.
9 The time
Your Eyes has no clock of its own — no battery, nothing ticking while it is unplugged. This page tells it the time whenever you connect, which is all it needs. It also means the clock disappears after you unplug it, rather than showing you a time that is hours stale. Plug it back in and open this page, and it knows again.
10 How it greets you
One line, shown once when it wakes up — when you plug it in, or when you plug a screen into it. After that it gets on with its day as usual.
A greeting too long for one line scrolls, and it always finishes — if a full pass takes longer than the time you set, it gets the time it needs rather than being cut off mid-name.
Try something
Watch your Eyes, not the screen.
Connection log
It has a day
Playful, curious, content, bored, drowsy, napping — minutes long each, drawn rather than cycled, so two hours of watching never repeat.
Thirty-three behaviours
It tracks things that aren't there, double-takes, tilts its head, yawns, sneezes, rolls its eyes. A few are rare enough that you'll still catch new ones next week.
A quiet voice
Every so often it looks at you and says something small at the bottom of the screen. Rare on purpose — company, not notifications. You can add your own words.
What you need
A USB cable and a desktop browser. No Bluetooth, no Wi-Fi, no pairing — your Eyes has no radio in it at all.
| Windows 10 / 11 | Works | No driver needed — it appears as a COM port. |
|---|---|---|
| macOS | Works | No driver needed. |
| Linux | Works | Your user needs serial-port access — on most distributions that means being in the
dialout group, then logging back in. |
| ChromeOS | Works | — |
| Chrome, Edge, Opera | Supported | Desktop versions. |
| Safari, Firefox | Not supported | Neither browser implements Web Serial. Use Chrome or Edge. |
| Phones and tablets | Not supported | Your Eye still works perfectly on its own — it just can't be customised from a phone. |
Questions
Does any of this reach your servers?
No. The page runs entirely in your browser and writes straight down the USB cable. We serve the page; we never see your settings or your words.
What happens if I unplug it without saving?
It goes back to its last saved settings. Nothing is damaged — the changes simply weren't committed yet.
Can I put it back how it came?
Yes — Reset to defaults, then Save. That restores the square eyes, its normal energy and its own voice lines, and clears every word you gave it.
Why does my browser ask permission every time?
That's the browser protecting you: a web page can never reach a USB device without you choosing it from that list first.
Does it need to stay plugged into a computer?
Only to customise. Day to day it runs from any USB power supply or battery.