A 3D particle fluid living inside the case of a Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-AMOLED-1.8. The screen is the front wall of a glass box, and the depth you see receding into the display is the real thickness of the enclosure.
Measured on hardware: 900 particles, ~100 fps display, ~38 simulation steps/s.
This repo is custom firmware for the Waveshare ESP32-S3 Touch AMOLED board. Hundreds of glowing blue particles slosh around inside a virtual box shaped like the device itself — move, tilt, or shake the board and they follow, as if liquid were trapped behind the screen.
This repo contains:
- A fluid simulation that runs on the ESP32-S3 in real time
- A renderer that draws each particle with perspective, depth, and velocity-based colour
- IMU integration so gravity, shake, and rotation all affect the fluid
Press the case's PWR button briefly to reset the simulation. Holding PWR still powers the device off as usual.
- Rendering — the display is drawn in horizontal strips and sent out while the next strip is being prepared. Particle colour comes from a precomputed table based on speed and depth.
- Simulation — particles push each other apart when too close and pull together when too far, which keeps the motion stable even when you shake the board hard.
- Motion — the onboard accelerometer and gyroscope tell the simulation which way is down and how the board is moving.
For geometry, solver internals, performance numbers, and every tunable constant, see fluidbox/README.md.
. ~/esp/esp-idf/export.sh # ESP-IDF v5.5.5, see fluidbox/README.md for first-time setup
cd fluidbox
idf.py -p /dev/cu.usbmodem101 flash monitor| Path | Contents |
|---|---|
fluidbox/ |
The ESP-IDF project: display, IMU, solver, renderer |
tools/capture.py |
Non-interactive serial log capture, for scripting measurements |
tools/preview/ |
Host-side build of the real renderer, for judging geometry without flashing |