Your first adventure
Dash-Chan turns the official M5Stack StackChan K151 into an offline companion for passive radio awareness and GPS wardriving. It has scripted personality, original animated avatars, head motion, a touch sensor, and local speech. No account or cloud AI is required.
Set up
- Install with the web flasher, or follow manual flashing and recovery. Use the official K151, not a DIY servo Stack-chan.
- Insert a FAT32 microSD card. Connect your M5Stack Unit GPS to blue Port C. GPS uses receive-only UART2 on G18; servos use their own UART. For other modules, see the compatibility table and wiring guide.
- Open MENU → GPS & SD → GPS SETUP. Select your module preset and actual port. Tap APPLY SETTINGS, or APPLY + FIND BAUD if its speed is unknown. The finder saves a rate after two valid NMEA sentences, or restores the applied rate after cancellation/timeout. Stop recording before changing GPS settings.
- Go outside with a clear view of the sky. GPS READY means a fresh fix, valid UTC, four or more satellites, and HDOP no greater than 5. Acquiring satellites alone is not enough.
- Choose Buddy + Look for your buddy and theme. Under Personality, enable gentle or lively head motion if desired. Motion is off on a new installation; existing preferences persist.
- Under Sound & Voice, choose your volume and alert tone. Voice starts OFF. Enable it only if you want speech. Master sound OFF silences both speech and tones immediately. Your pet keeps animating and collecting signals when muted.
The face is home
The pet remains visible during alerts and recording. No event automatically opens a different page. A compact signal ribbon shows the family and confidence; the face reacts, and the speech bubble shows its personality.
- START DRIVE: creates a new SD file and begins waiting for usable GPS observations.
- STOP & SAVE: flushes and closes the file. Listening continues.
- Tap the face: affection, heart eyes, and bond. If Voice is on, deliberate screen pets may say “i Love Your Face,” at most once a minute.
- Stroke/hold the top sensor: visual affection. Head-sensor events never trigger speech. The sensor must settle released for 600 ms, then hold a meaningful touch for 250 ms; a held or noisy sensor cannot repeatedly fire.
- Tap the alert bubble: dismiss the reaction. Listening and logging continue.
- FACE / RECON: switch between a screen-filling expression and pet-with-nearby-clues. Tap a nearby clue for detail.
- MENU: opens the eight main controls. BACK returns through the menu to the face.
Settings map
| Menu | Controls |
|---|---|
| Buddy + Look | Mochi, Sprout, Orbit, Wisp, Ember, or a custom buddy; Dark, Light, Matrix, BWM; Avatar Studio with eyes, layered outfits, and Auto/Always/Off field gear |
| Sound & Voice | Personality, Siren, Arcade, Chime, Silent; volume 0/100/170/220/255; Master sound; Voice; preview; synthetic Axon demo |
| Personality | Head motion Off/Gentle/Lively; Spicy panic/Gentle lookout; pet button |
| Detection | Confidence filter; same-family quiet period 60/180/300 seconds; optional five-minute reminders |
| Recent Clues | Up to 32 entries, four per page; transport, RSSI, name/address, evidence, count, last-seen age |
| Display + Fun | Recon/Face, four backgrounds, mood lights, tilt, head swipe, wave hello, auto brightness, NFC outfit cards |
| Upload drives | Latest 24 drive files, configured destinations, explicit confirmation, cancel, refresh; setup guide |
| GPS & SD | Fix/satellites/HDOP, received NMEA characters, rows, queue drops, storage errors, module presets, port/RX, baud finder, wiring help, SD retry |
Silent is a detection-tone choice. Voice OFF disables every spoken clip. Master sound OFF disables all audio. With Voice OFF, Personality uses electronic sounds instead of speech. Spicy captions can remain on-screen independently of voice.
Dinner is earned
Only new Wi-Fi BSSIDs successfully saved with valid GPS during a wardrive count as discoveries. Each earns one XP; five earn +12 fuel. Every 25 XP adds one level; all looks remain unlocked from level 1. BLE, watch mode, head touches, face taps, and synthetic demos award no food.
Food progress resets on each new drive. A 2 KB approximate per-drive filter prevents repeated BSSIDs from earning food again in that session. On very large drives it can conservatively miss a new discovery. Food deduplication does not remove otherwise eligible CSV rows. Fuel drains slowly to a floor of 10 and is saved with experience.
Your files
/wardrives/dash-00000001.csvand subsequent numbers: WiGLE 1.4 CSV, ready for your own WiGLE upload./events/detections.csv: emitted detection events, separate from WiGLE./dashchan/avatar.cfg: optional custom appearance, loaded at boot or SD retry./dashchan/upload.json: optional private Wi-Fi/API setup; upload guide./dashchan/watchlist.csv: optional personal signature rules.
Tap STOP & SAVE before ejecting the card or powering off. A sudden power loss can still lose the last buffered writes or corrupt FAT metadata. Uploads are off until configured. Optional auto-send after Stop + Save requires an explicit setup choice. Keep real observation files and factory backups private when reporting issues.
Custom buddy
Open Avatar Studio. Choose a preset or mix a base shape, six eye styles, three colors, headwear, glasses, and neckwear. Names allow up to 16 ASCII letters, digits, spaces, hyphens, or underscores. Your browser keeps a local draft. Preview different moods and travel poses before sending it.
USB: install firmware 0.4 or newer, disconnect the installer, leave Dash-Chan running normally, stop any recording, and select Send to StackChan. The uploader checks the running firmware, sends the profile, and waits for AVATAR OK. It does not reflash the robot or change mute settings. An older firmware receives a clear upgrade message before a new profile is sent.
SD: download avatar.cfg, create /dashchan/, copy the file there, and restart. That file takes priority on every boot; remove or update it if you later want a USB-uploaded appearance to persist. USB uploads are stored in NVS. The creator customizes the five original vector shapes; it is not an arbitrary photo/sprite uploader.
The original DCAV1 files still work. New exports use DCAV2:
DCAV2 0 FFF3D2 FFAD73 1 101029 5 0 2 Signal scout
The studio guide documents every field and style. RGB colors are quantized to the LCD's RGB565 format. On-device, use Buddy + Look → Avatar Studio to cycle eyes and accessories, then Show my buddy to return home.
Field kit: Auto shows the antenna and listening receiver while recording or moving. Fresh usable GPS speed must stay at least 5 km/h for three seconds to start cruising; speed at most 2 km/h for five seconds stops it. Invalid/stale GPS clears cruising immediately. Always keeps the kit visible; Off hides it. The illustrated receiver is decorative and does not process microphone audio or determine a signal's bearing.
What a signal means
A match is evidence about a radio broadcast, not proof of police presence, recording, ownership, tracking intent, or an exact product model. Wi-Fi/BLE addresses and names are spoofable. The robot's looking-around motion is personality, not direction finding. See coverage and confidence before interpreting alerts.