NUVI AI DESK COMPANION

Screwdriver for 3mm and 2.5mm screws

Arduino App Lab

Step-down DC-DC buck LM2596S

Metal-gear servo

Arduino® UNO™ Q 4GB

microphone USB

Modulino™ Thermo

Touch sensor TTP223 

Speaker USB

Feetech STS3215 serial servo

3D printer

Power Supply 12V 10A

SPI display 480×320

PCA9685 16-channel PWM driver

Modulino™ Distance

Soldering Iron station

<html><body><h3>What is Nuvi?</h3>Nuvi is a small AI companion robot — under 30 cm tall — that notices you when you walk up, listens when you call its name, and answers out loud, right on the device. It has animated eyes, moving ears and arms, reacts to touch, and can even dance. At its heart is the Arduino UNO Q, which runs the whole thing: real-time body control on one side, and the AI that lets Nuvi hear and answer on the other. <h3>The story</h3>Arduino asked me to build a robot assistant around their new board, the UNO Q — something that could really do things. The first design was cold: it worked, but it felt like a machine, not something you'd want to talk to. So we changed direction. Instead of a gadget, we made a little companion. The inspiration came from a Shiba Inu owned by someone on the Arduino team — and that's where Nuvi came from. Turning that idea into a real, tiny, expressive robot is what this project is about. <figure><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8EGUWimpKA&amp;t=1s"></iframe></figure><h3>What Nuvi can do</h3>Voice &amp; conversation — Wakes and responds when called by name ("Nuvi"). Local voice, so it speaks without internet. Replies in English whatever language you use. Searches the web when needed. Adaptive threshold so it works in noisy rooms too. Presence &amp; behavior — Senses you by proximity and wakes when you come close. Falls asleep on its own after inactivity. Looks around when it's alone. Movement — Head pan/tilt, two ears, two independent arms, and a dance. Touch — Head touch and belly touch, each with its own reaction. Gestures — Open palm → tells you the room temperature &amp; humidity. V sign → toggles your lights. Sensors — Room temperature/humidity, distance, touch, plus CPU load and processor temperature. If a sensor is unavailable, it says so instead of making up a value. Body / display — Animated eyes with expressions (happy, sleepy, sad, curious) and small status icons on the chest (thinking, talking, sleeping). Smart home — Toggles devices via MQTT, by voice or the V gesture. <h3>The body</h3>Nuvi is built from many 3D-printed parts. A key goal was keeping it under 30 cm tall, which left almost no room inside — every wire and motor had to fit in a tiny space. The trickiest part was the neck: I wanted a clean look, with no visible cables or support levers, just a head that moves on its own. <h3>The electronics</h3>Arduino UNO Q — the brain. 4× metal-gear servos for the arms and ears, driven by a PCA9685 over I2C. 2× Feetech STS3215 serial servos for the neck (pan + tilt), on a serial control board. A 480×320 SPI display for the animated eyes. Distance sensors for presence/proximity, temperature/humidity sensor, and touch on head and belly. USB microphone and a speaker. A step-down converter for power — added after the first build kept browning out when the screen, audio and motors all drew current at once. <h3>The voice pipeline</h3>A local noise filter on the robot separates your sentence from the room noise. The distance sensors drop anyone who isn't close enough — if no one is near, it doesn't even listen. What's left goes straight to the model: it listens and answers in one shot, with no separate speech-to-text step. Nuvi knows the sentence was meant for it by recognizing its own name. While it's speaking, it stops listening — otherwise it would hear itself and reply to itself. The brain is Gemini, called directly. The same API does two jobs: understanding what it hears, and producing the reply. For speaking without the network, Nuvi uses Piper, a voice engine that runs on the robot, so the answer comes back almost instantly instead of waiting on the cloud. </body></html>

ShibaInuRobot

feetech_read_servo_info

shiba-inu

NUVI AI DESK COMPANION

A little desktop companion robot that notices you, listens, and talks back — powered by the Arduino UNO Q.