Week 2 — Design
You have a concept. Now make it real — at low fidelity first, then higher. Week 2 is about rapid prototyping and fearless iteration: electronics on a breadboard, firmware running hello-world, and a 3D sketch of the body.
Learning Objectives
By the end of Week 2 you will be able to:
- Wire a basic ESP32 circuit with a display or sensor
- Flash firmware using the ESP-Claw framework
- Send your first message to an LLM via OpenRouter and receive a response
- Sketch and prototype the robot’s physical form
- Run a first user test (lo-fi prototype, real feedback)
Sessions
→ View period-by-period schedule
Session 3 — Monday · Electronics, Firmware & LLM Integration
The hardware talks. By the end of the day your robot will be sending a prompt to an LLM and displaying the answer on screen.
This is often the most intimidating session. Don’t worry — by the end of it your board will be blinking, displaying text, or responding to a button press. That’s real.
Agenda: - OpenRouter, APIs & LLM system architecture · 梁俊睿 - MCP protocol · cloud/LLM integration patterns · 梁俊睿 - Electronics lab: wiring sensors, displays & actuators · Shimon + Daniel - Firmware lab: first HTTP call to OpenRouter from ESP32, display reply · Shimon + Daniel - Prompt engineering: write a system prompt that gives your robot its personality · Shimon + Daniel - 3D modeling intro & enclosure concept sketches · Daniel
Starter prompt template:
You are [robot name], a [personality adjective] AI companion
designed for [target user].
You respond in [language preference], in [tone] — no more than
2 sentences per reply. You never break character.
When someone says hello, you respond with your signature greeting.OpenRouter provides a single API that routes to any LLM — Qwen, DeepSeek, Claude, and others. You write one integration and can swap models with a single parameter change. No re-wiring required.
Session 4 — Wednesday · Form Development & Espressif Guest Lecture
The physical form takes shape. Guest engineers from Espressif explain the full ESP32 ecosystem.
Agenda: - Design critique: prototype review & form iteration · Daniel - Form development workshop: translating personality into shape · Daniel - Guest lecture: Espressif engineers — ESP32 family & ecosystem deep dive, ESP-Claw tooling & partner integrations (2 periods) - Integration lab: hardware + firmware + LLM end-to-end · Shimon + Daniel - Open studio: prototype build · Daniel
Paper prototypes aren’t “not done yet.” They’re a tool. The goal is to learn fast and cheaply before committing to 3D printing.
✓ Week 2 Deliverables
Resources for Week 2
Firmware & Hardware
- ESP-Claw Getting Started — official ESP-Claw docs and examples
- PlatformIO + ESP-IDF setup — PlatformIO’s ESP-IDF framework integration guide
- VS Code + PlatformIO + ESP32 setup — SunFounder — illustrated step-by-step guide for the recommended IDE setup
LLM Integration & Prompt Engineering
- OpenRouter Quickstart — API key setup and first call in minutes
- OpenRouter Models list & pricing — compare Qwen, DeepSeek, Claude and others
- Prompt Engineering Overview — Anthropic — structured guide to writing effective prompts
- Keep Claude in Character — Anthropic — how to maintain robot personality consistency
- Anthropic Prompt Engineering Interactive Tutorial — hands-on Jupyter notebook course from Anthropic
3D Modeling with Blender
- Beginner Blender 5.0 Donut Tutorial — Blender Guru — the most-watched Blender beginner series, updated for 2025
- Official Blender Tutorials — Blender.org — curated official tutorial index