Designing the inner chassis around the electronics
Fig 1: Designing the inner chassis around the electronics

YAPPL

Personal Project
A mushroom-shaped voice journal with reminders and a self-hosted dashboard.
Date 02 October 2026
Role Maker
Skills CAD, 3D printing, Electronics, Embedded development, Full-stack development

I never stuck with journaling, so I built a mushroom to nag me about it. YAPPL sits on my nightstand, gets impatient when I miss an evening, and starts recording when I press its cap.

I designed the 3D-printed enclosure and screwless inner chassis around an ESP32S3, microphone, expressive OLED eyes, and reminder lights. Audio streams over Wi-Fi to my home server for local transcription with whisper.cpp. A self-hosted dashboard organizes recordings and transcripts, with optional AI summaries and recurring-topic tracking.

Every entry preserves my original voice. The summaries help me browse; the recordings are what I want to keep.

Software, CAD, and bill of materials →

Build Video & Demo:

The original mushroom-shaped concept, complete with googly eyes
Fig 2: The original mushroom-shaped concept, complete with googly eyes
Breadboard prototype with the OLED, microphone, reminder LED, and buzzer
Fig 3: Breadboard prototype with the OLED, microphone, reminder LED, and buzzer
Yappl, ready to hear about my day
Fig 4: Yappl, ready to hear about my day
A slightly impatient reminder to start journaling
Fig 5: A slightly impatient reminder to start journaling
The journal dashboard, with a timeline of entries and summaries of each day
Fig 6: The journal dashboard, with a timeline of entries and summaries of each day
Keeping track of recurring people and places. Names and transcripts are anonymized.
Fig 7: Keeping track of recurring people and places. Names and transcripts are anonymized.

Brady Y. Lin

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© 2026 Brady Y. Lin