A Super Cheap Desk Toy Becomes a Hackable Desktop Notifier
Article excerpt
The GeekMagic SmallTV is as its name suggests, a tiny, vaguely TV-styled, device with a screen, that’s sold as a desktop notifier. Depending on the firmware running on the device …read more
The GeekMagic SmallTV is as its name suggests, a tiny, vaguely TV-styled, device with a screen, that’s sold as a desktop notifier. Depending on the firmware running on the device it can display various pieces of information, ranging from the time and weather to the current price of Bitcoin. What makes it interesting is that it supports software updates over WiFi, so [Giovi321] has made a new firmware package for it.
These things are readily available from AliExpress.
It seems there are several versions of this device, something which appears to be reflected in the prices they sell for on AliExpress. The older version runs on the ESP8266, and there’s also a ESP32-C2 variant in the wild. The firmware supports both flavors, providing stock and crypto tickers, an ADS-B tracker, and a Claude AI token usage gauge.
What gives this potential is that the various functions are clearly split out in the code, and there’s nothing to stop you pointing it at a data source of your choosing. This makes it more than a bit of cheap e-waste novelty, and we hope that others will take up the baton and do interesting things with it.
The ESSP8266 is a chip we don’t see too much of these days, having been surpassed by its ESP32 siblings. Still, someone recently gave it a simple OS.