Notes
AI toy engineering notes
Wake words, latency budgets, silicon tiers and cost drivers for talking toys and desktop AI robots — the trade-offs to settle before the quote.
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Nov 4, 2026
The WiFi screen badge feature checklist: clock basics to AI tools
Modern screen badges carry more than an animated face — weather, alarms, music, AI conversation, translation and meeting notes on a pin. A walkthrough of the feature set and what each one needs from the hardware.
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Oct 16, 2026
Budgeting a desktop AI robot: where the BOM money actually goes
A desktop AI robot's cost sits in five buckets — display, compute, voice, motion, power. Knowing which bucket scales with which feature keeps the BOM aligned with what buyers pay for.
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Sep 11, 2026
The badge that talks: designing AI conversation into wearable merch
Putting a conversation on a pin means deciding who wakes it, where the model runs and how the character reacts. The design decisions behind talking screen badges.
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Sep 2, 2026
Custom wake words: what voice platforms actually let you change
Two toys from the same factory can ship with different levels of voice customization. What wake words, voices and phrase engines are typically open — and closed — per platform tier.
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Aug 11, 2026
On-device or cloud: where the conversation of an AI toy should run
Every AI conversation in a toy happens somewhere — a chip inside the plush, or a server somewhere else. The trade-offs between local and cloud conversation, and the hybrid that most products land on.
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Aug 10, 2026
Simple outside, controlled inside: architecture for connected gift products
A connected gift should look simple to the recipient and be strictly controlled underneath: what the device receives, what the service keeps, and what the OEM must deliver.
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Jul 22, 2026
Privacy layers: how to sell a robot that watches the room without being creepy
Hardware mute, on-device inference, encrypted transport, account-scoped access — four layers that turn privacy from a liability into the product's selling point.
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Jul 10, 2026
A pendant that reacts: why the best AI toys are mostly offline
Tap, shake, pick a tile, play an animation — the reaction loop of a pocket AI gadget can run entirely on-device, and that is a feature, not a compromise.
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Jun 16, 2026
Wake words, buttons and always-on: how a talking toy starts listening
The moment a toy begins to hear shapes its cost, its battery and its parents' trust. The three wake designs for AI toys, and what each one commits the product to.
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Jun 15, 2026
When the password is a conversation: voice-verified unlocks in toys and gifts
How answer verification turns a dialogue into a lock — the interaction design, the failure modes and the hardware that has to back it up.
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