ESP32-S3
Spoot: Spotted Early keeps ESP32-S3 in one place: 2 stories so far. The section currently leads with “This folding gadget skips the apps and names the bird instead” and “The fridge magnet grocery list just got a Wi-Fi spine and a vibe-coded soul”. Coming across an unfamiliar bird is often the beginning of a phone search, with a few unrelated notifications along for the ride. The first confession is the best part: "I didn't hand-write this." That's not shame, that's a flex. Spoot: Spotted Early New things, caught while they're still new and a little weird. Spoot finds fresh gadgets, clever inventions, crowdfunding campaigns,… The list below is every ESP32-S3 story on Spoot: Spotted Early, newest first.
This folding gadget skips the apps and names the bird instead
Coming across an unfamiliar bird is often the beginning of a phone search, with a few unrelated notifications along for the ride. The log handheld skips all that. It folds shut like a pocket-sized slab, then opens into a dedicated wildlife field guide, no apps, no distractions, just the bird and the screen that knows what it is. This is a concept, and Spoot says that plainly: it's not shipping tomorrow. But the idea is the thing worth staring at. A device that does one job, does it beautifully, and refuses to be a general-purpose computer. It's the kind of narrow focus that makes you wonder what else could use the same treatment.
The fridge magnet grocery list just got a Wi-Fi spine and a vibe-coded soul
The first confession is the best part: "I didn't hand-write this." That's not shame, that's a flex. Someone pointed Claude Code at an M5Stack PaperMono, ESP32-S3, e-ink touchscreen, about 2,400 lines of C++, and said *make me a fridge magnet shopping list with a Wi-Fi spine*. It worked. It's on a fridge right now, being used daily by a family, which the builder admits is a first for any home project they've made. That's the razor clam. The board itself is ridiculous in the best way: BLE, Wi-Fi and LoRa on one slice of hardware, all waiting for someone to ask what else it could do. This time it just uses Wi-Fi. But the firmware is vibe-coded, the soul is in the asking, and the thing actually shipped. To a fridge.