What I Built
Starbi is a small custom PCB that works as a pocket sensor buddy. It's built around a Seeed XIAO ESP32-C3 and combines an OLED display, an MPU6050 motion sensor, a DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor, and two buttons. Tilt it, shake it, or leave it on your desk, and it shows what it senses on screen.
Who would pay for it? Makers, students, and workshop organizers. A first PCB is intimidating, and most people end up with a breadboard full of loose modules and jumper wires. Starbi is a finished, routed board with open design files, so someone can solder it, flash it, and have a working gadget in an afternoon.
The side hustle: sell it as a solder-it-yourself kit (or pre-assembled) through hobbyist marketplaces and maker meetups, or bundle it with a paid beginner PCB workshop. Parts are cheap and the board is small. I haven't sold one yet, so this is the plan rather than a result.
Demo
GitHub repo: https://github.com/ThakuraAnki/Starbi
[Add a screenshot of the PCB editor or 3D view here]
Code
https://github.com/ThakuraAnki/Starbi
How I Built It
I was already planning to make something like a Starbie, so I used it as my starting point. It's a guided project and a good first PCB. I followed the instructions in the original repo: https://github.com/SharKingStudios/Starbie/tree/main
Schematic. I wired up the XIAO ESP32-C3, the OLED display, the MPU6050, the DHT11 sensor, and the two buttons.
Routing. I moved into KiCad's PCB Editor to route everything, but doing it by hand got messy very fast. I looked up some routing tips online to keep things clean. Instead of dragging every ground line around the board, I added a full-board GND copper pour on the top layer so the ground connections happen automatically.
Problems I hit and fixed. When I ran the Design Rules Check (DRC), a few errors came up for trapped, isolated ground pads: Pad 1 on the OLED, Pad 4 on the DHT11, and Pad 2 on J2. After some searching, I found that nearby traces were blocking the ground pour from reaching them. I fixed this by manually routing short bridge tracks from each of those pads out into the ground zone.
Result. After the fix, DRC cleared with 0 unconnected pads.
What I learned: a ground pour saves a lot of routing work, but you still have to check that every ground pad can actually reach it. DRC caught what I couldn't see by eye.
Why Does Open Innovation Matter?
I couldn't have built this without other people's open work. The Starbie repo gave me a guided starting point instead of a blank canvas. KiCad is free and open source, so designing a real PCB cost me nothing. Even my routing fixes came from strangers sharing tips online.
It also matters for the side hustle. Starbi is built on open hardware, so anyone can fork it, swap the sensors, or change the board shape. A small seller doesn't need a license or a gatekeeper. They only need the files, a PCB fab, and an idea. I want to pass that on by keeping my repo open for the next beginner who wants a first board.
Prize Categories
Best Use of Arduino: Starbi is built around the XIAO ESP32-C3, an Arduino-compatible board, and [programmed with the Arduino IDE / Arduino framework, confirm this].
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