Setup and Daily Use

Setup and daily use

Everything after flashing: getting the device onto your WiFi, then living with it.

What you need

• A Claude Code OAuth token. Run this in your terminal and copy the result:

  claude setup-token

• Your WiFi network name and password (2.4 GHz — ESP32 boards don't do 5 GHz).
• A 4-digit PIN you'll remember. It encrypts the token and is never stored, so there is no recovery if you forget it.

First-time setup

On first boot — or after a factory reset — the device starts a captive portal.

1. The device screen shows a WiFi network named ClaudeMonitor-XXXX along with its password. Join that network from your phone or laptop.
2. Open http://192.168.4.1 in a browser. (Most phones pop the page up automatically.)
3. Fill in the form: WiFi credentials, your OAuth token, and your 4-digit PIN.
4. Hit Save & Reboot.

The device encrypts the token with your PIN, stores it, and connects to your WiFi. See Security for what that encryption actually does.

On the ESP32-C3-OLED the screen is too small for the full random password, so it shows a simpler 8-digit one instead.

Daily use

On every boot you enter your PIN with the board's buttons:

• Button A cycles the current digit (0–9)
• Button B confirms it and moves to the next

Once unlocked, the dashboard appears and refreshes on its own.

On ✨ Dust (v3) boards there's a second way: logging into the web panel from any browser on your network unlocks the screen too — no button-cycling. Reach it at claude-usage-stick.local (or your device-name slug); by design the locked screen doesn't display the address — it appears in the dashboard header only after unlock. The panel is also where settings, token rotation and WiFi changes live after setup.

Controls

Button	Clarity (v1)	🥭 Mango (v2)	✨ Dust (v3)
A	Cycle brightness	Flip screen 180°	Next screen
A held ≥ 0.6 s	—	—	Flip screen 180° (saved)
B	Force refresh	Cycle brightness	Cycle brightness (saved)
A+B	—	Force refresh	Force refresh
A+B held on boot	Factory reset	Factory reset	Factory reset

Boards without two buttons map this differently — one button by press duration, or touch zones on the touch panels. Check your board's guide:

• LilyGo T8 ESP32-S2 — short tap = A, long press = B
• CrowPanel Advance 3.5" — tap left half = A, tap right half = B
• T-Display S3 AMOLED — physical button = A, tap the screen = B
• ESP32-C3-OLED — buttons you wire yourself on GPIO 3 and GPIO 7

Factory reset

Holding A+B while the device boots wipes every stored credential and returns it to setup mode.

On ✨ Dust boards you rarely need it: WiFi changes and token rotation both live in the web panel, an unreachable network drops the device into a recovery portal by itself, and the panel's Danger zone can trigger the same full wipe from the browser.

Three boards can't do it in hardware — the T8-S2 and CrowPanel have no way to signal two simultaneous inputs, and GPIO 0 is a strapping pin. Re-flash those boards to wipe their storage.

Note that the device also wipes itself after 10 consecutive wrong PIN attempts, with the lockout delay doubling each time (60 s → 120 s → 240 s …).