Goblin DB-1
Desk Buddy ยท ESP32-C2

Network Goblin DB-1

Turn a few-dollar 1.54" "smart weather clock" cube into a desk goblin that keeps an eye on your network. He's happy when your ping is fast, sweats when it's slow, panics when the internet drops, and shouts "NEW FACE!" when an unknown device joins your LAN.

Feed him cookies, pat him (not too much, he bites), and he levels up from Cable Chewer to Goblin King of the LAN.

DB-1 screen: a happy pixel goblin saying 'Fast pings, full belly. Life is good.' with a 22 ms ping graph
What he does

A network mood ring with teeth

Network mood

Pings the internet every 5 s and your router every 10 s, with a live ping graph and an outage log. His gadget glows good, slow, down or no Wi-Fi.

New-device alerts

Sweeps your /24 every few minutes. The first sweep is the baseline; anything new after that is a "NEW FACE!". Name and approve devices from the web page.

Pet and XP

Hunger, happiness and 14 levels. Pats have a cooldown and an annoyance meter: happy, grumpy, angry, CHOMP, sulking.

Opinions

Dozens of mood-specific phrases filled with live values: ping, device count, SSID, router IP. Sleeps and dims at night.

Web page

A phone-friendly page for stats, devices and settings. Wi-Fi setup through its own hotspot.

Over-the-air updates

USB only once: after that, update from his web page, with rollback protection.

Moods

Happy, slow, offline, new face, angry, hungry

Six DB-1 screens: happy, slow (240 ms), internet lost, new device, angry, hungry
Hardware

Is my cube the right one?

MCUESP8684H4 (= ESP32-C2), 4 MB flash, 26 MHz crystal
USB-serialCH340C with auto-reset (no buttons needed)
Display1.54" 240ร—240 ST7789 on a 10-pin FPC
Marking20251226 V1.3 (other revisions may differ)

Different board? See HARDWARE.md for how the pinout was recovered.

Be a good goblin

Your network only

The new-device feature sends ARP requests across the network the goblin joins. Only use it on networks you own or have permission to monitor. Set LAN scan every to 0 in Settings to turn it off.

Not affiliated with the maker of the original weather clock. MIT licence.