p3a ("Pixel Pea") is a physical pixel art player inside the Makapix Club ecosystem. It is an ESP32-P4-powered Wi-Fi art frame that displays pixel artworks, supports touch gestures, and can be controlled from your phone or laptop. Register your device at dev.makapix.club to unlock cloud connectivity and remote control.
- Get the hardware: Waveshare ESP32-P4-WIFI6-Touch-LCD-4B + microSD card
- Flash the firmware: Follow the flashing guide
- Add artwork: Copy WebP/GIF/PNG/JPEG files to an
animationsfolder on the microSD card - Connect to Wi-Fi: On first boot, connect to
p3a-setupnetwork and configure your Wi-Fi - Control it: Open
http://p3a.local/on your phone or tap the touchscreen
For detailed usage instructions, see HOW-TO-USE.md.
- Pixel art playback: Displays animated WebP, GIF, PNG, and JPEG files from microSD card
- Touch controls: Tap to change artwork, swipe to adjust brightness
- Web interface: Control the device from any browser at
http://p3a.local/ - Cloud connectivity: Register at dev.makapix.club to control your device remotely via secure TLS MQTT
- USB access: Connect via USB-C to access the microSD card as a storage device
- PICO-8 Monitor (optional): Stream PICO-8 games to the display—disabled by default to reduce firmware size, can be enabled at compile time
| Component | Details |
|---|---|
| Board | Waveshare ESP32-P4-WIFI6-Touch-LCD-4B |
| MCU | Dual-core ESP32-P4 + ESP32-C6 for Wi-Fi 6/BLE |
| Display | 4" square 720×720 IPS, 24-bit color, dimmable backlight |
| Touch | 5-point capacitive touchscreen |
| Memory | 32MB PSRAM, 32MB flash |
| Storage | microSD card slot |
| Power | USB-C (no battery) |
p3a is in active development. The following features are implemented:
- Display pipeline with multi-buffer rendering
- Animation playback with prefetching
- Touch gestures (tap, swipe, long-press)
- Wi-Fi provisioning with captive portal
- Local web UI and REST API
- TLS MQTT client with device registration and remote control from the website
- USB composite device (serial console + mass storage)
Coming soon:
- Feed ingestion from Makapix Club (automatic artwork downloads)
- Reactions from hardware (send likes to artworks)
- OTA firmware updates
- Browser-based web flasher (under development)
See ROADMAP.md for the full development plan.
| Document | Description |
|---|---|
| HOW-TO-USE.md | Detailed usage instructions |
| flash-p3a.md | How to flash the firmware |
| INFRASTRUCTURE.md | Technical architecture for developers |
| ROADMAP.md | Development roadmap and milestones |
main/— Application entry point, display/touch drivers, animation player, format decoderscomponents/— Custom components: app state, config store, HTTP API, Makapix integration, decodersmanaged_components/— ESP-IDF Component Registry dependencieswebui/— Web interface files (compiled into SPIFFS)docs/— Documentation
Makapix Club is a pixel-art social network. Register your p3a at dev.makapix.club to:
- Control your device remotely from the website
- Receive artwork notifications via secure MQTT
- (Coming soon) Download artworks automatically and send reactions
Contributions are welcome! See the INFRASTRUCTURE.md for technical details about the codebase.
