A MVP product for the course ECE 140B: The Art of Product Engineering as of Spring 2022. ECE 140B is a hands-on course that guides students on building a working IoT product for a customer/market. My (group's) proposed product was a handheld virtual pet, similar to a Tamagotchi, that teaches children healthy habits and responsibility. This product was branded as Pep Pets, and it is targeted towards parents of children aged 8-13 years old.

Pep Pets are a unique product that appeals to the idea of raising a real pet. Raising any pet requires upholding the responsibility of feeding and tending it. For Pep Pets, to keep them happy and healthy, users would need to complete tasks that range from walking outside everyday to completing chores assigned by their parents. Pep Pets makes teaching children good habits and responsibility easier on their parents without all the risks and costs associated with a real pet or phone. Unlike other chore or task tracking apps, parents do not have to micromanage a child's device every single day, simply input tasks they want completed by their child on our website and mark it done when it is been completed.

Although small as it looks, this project packs hours worth of ideation, software and hardware development, and market analysis. Embedded in the device is a Raspberry Pi, accelerometer, OLED display, buttons, and 7-segment displays. The case was modeled on Fusion360 and 3D-printed, but with further refinement and aspirations in mass production, we would hope for an injection molded case. The firmware for Pep Pets was developed in Python as it notably requires seven different multi-threads for tracking happiness states, tracking hunger loss, tracking in-game level experience, capturing pedometer steps, monitoring button presses, writing for any serial communications, and reading for any serial communications. Additionally, each Pep Pet requires a database instance to store/receive tasks assigned by parents through an external full-stack website.