Kori

A little pixel companion who studies with you, works with you, rests with you, and helps you take care of your space.

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Inspiration

At Team One-Percent, we feel that studying or working for long periods can feel isolating, even when surrounded by others. Our team has experienced this across classrooms, libraries, offices, and remote work setups. For this Hackathon, we wanted to create a remedy that didn’t force productivity or track performance, but simply stayed by your side. Imagine a constant yet comforting presence, like (most) house cats. Imagine someone that reacts to your environment, encourages balance, and makes staying focused feel supportive, rather than monitored. The idea of a small spirit cat named Kori came from wanting a companion who is observant but not demanding, a familiar presence who rests when you rest, focuses when you focus, and encourages you when you need support, not pressure.

What it does

Kori appears on a Raspberry Pi touchscreen as a companion who shares your work time. When you begin focusing, Kori wakes up and settles in with you. When you pause, Kori waits without judging time gone. When you’re finished for the day, Kori goes to sleep.

Kori pays attention to your working environment through sound levels, temperature, humidity, air quality, and emotional cues from the camera. If your environment or emotional state seems like it could be affecting your comfort or focus, Kori will ask about it once an hour, never more, and always in the same non-judgmental format with only two responses: Yes or Later. The goal isn't to pressure users but to simply bring things to their attention.

The microphone is used only to understand how loud the space feels, and the camera is used only to recognize general mood and presence so Kori can respond more kindly. As you continue working, you earn coins that can be used to decorate Kori’s room, letting it's space grow as your own consistency does. The connected mobile app shows session history, environmental patterns, and the cozy environment the two of you build together over time.

How we built it

Hardware: Kori lives on a Raspberry Pi with a touchscreen display that lets the user and the companion interact directly. We made Kori fully touch-screen so the interaction feels natural and direct. The user simply taps, to pause, wake, or pet Kori; the same way you would with an actual house cat. A set of environmental sensors give Kori awareness: a BME280 for temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure; an oxygen sensor for overall air quality; a microphone to understand general sound levels; and a small camera to quietly recognize emotional cues without storing images or identifying faces. All of this sits inside a custom-designed case, so Kori feels like a presence, not a gadget—something that lives on your desk, rather than something placed there.

Software: The software is split into layers so Kori feels responsive and alive. On the Raspberry Pi, we run a lightweight Express server that handles state, sensor readings, and communication, and an Electron app that displays Kori’s animations, sleep/wake cycle, prompts, and environmental awareness on the touchscreen. The companion React Native mobile app connects to the Pi’s server to sync focus session history, environmental trends, and the shared room environment where you can decorate Kori’s space with the coins you earn. The mobile app also acts as the home for settings relating to the hardware component. This separation allows Kori respond in real time on the Pi while the app serves as a focused reflection space, rather than just another control panel. Additionally the mobile app uses Gemini to process data to create helpful insights for the user.

Challenges we ran into

Hardware: One of the biggest challenges was building the device directly on the Raspberry Pi without using a breadboard. We wanted Kori to feel intentional and compact, which meant wiring every sensor, button, and rotary input straight into the Pi. However, as we added more components, fitting everything inside a custom case while keeping it stable, cool, and accessible became its own engineering puzzle. The CAD design and 3D printing process took an excruciating amount of time as we refined cable paths, mounting points, and screen alignment until the enclosure felt like our vision of Kori. At the same time, having so many physical inputs could have made the interaction confusing, so we used software to simplify everything into a small set of clear touch-screen actions: one tap to pause, two taps to end, gentle touch to pet, and sliding motion for brightness and audio. This allows the hardware to stay beautifully complex on the inside, while the experience remains calm, intuitive, and companion-like on the outside.

Software: On the software side, we were all learning in motion. Working with React Native for the mobile app while also building an Electron interface and Express server on the Raspberry Pi required us to coordinate state, communication, timing, and network behavior. It was also, for us, an incredible learning feat. Managing animations, sensor polling, and prompt timing without making Kori feel robotic took careful fine-tuning. There were various speed bumps, frustrations, half-working code, but we kept going, and eventually everything came together into something we’re proud of.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Software: We’re proud of how smoothly the software came together, especially given that many of us were new to building projects that blended hardware interaction with a mobile interface. Creating a system that included an Electron UI, an Express state server on the Pi, and a React Native mobile app required much learning and collaboration, and seeing them synchronize so naturally felt incredibly rewarding. We’re also proud of the tone and feel of Kori. The UI is gentle, intuitive, and aesthetically soothing, further supporting individual focus. It feels personal, which is exactly what we hoped for.

Hardware: We are excited that we were able to work directly with the Raspberry Pi 5, which many of us had been looking forward to experimenting with for a long time. Wiring everything directly into the Pi and enclosing it in a custom-designed case was challenging, but seeing Kori exist as a physical companion, as something you can sit beside, was genuinely very meaningful. It was also a blast experimenting with the numerous Input/Output components such as the sensors. The final build is compact, stable, and feels like a small presence rather than a device, which was our goal from the beginning.

What we learned

Software: We learned how important it is to design tone and experience just as intentionally as the logic behind the system. Building Kori taught us that good supporting software is not defined by the number of features, but how they’re expressed, how often they speak, and how they respond. We also learned how to coordinate multiple runtimes at once: Electron for the UI, Express for shared state, and React Native for mobile reflection. That meant learning how to keep data flowing (without interruption), how to avoid latency, and how to design a companion spirit that feels present. The biggest takeaway was that emotional interaction is a type of technical problem too, and one that is truly rewarding to try to solve.

Hardware: On the hardware side, we learned how different physical design is from simply assembling electronics. Wiring sensors and inputs directly to the Raspberry Pi meant we had to think about scope and physical layout from the start. We used a caliper to determine what fits, what doesn’t, and what happens when one more cable changes the entire space inside the case. We learned how case design affects heat flow, durability, repairability, and the feeling of “presence” on a desk. Working through CAD modeling and 3D printing taught us that millimeters matter, and that a beautiful idea still has to respect screw holes, cable strain, and mounting tolerances. Most importantly, we learned that building hardware is like creating a body for something that will live on someone’s desk everyday while still exuding comfort, stability, and warmth are as important as electronics.

What's next for Kori

Software: On the software side, we would love to make Kori even more emotionally aware and expressive. Right now, Kori responds to comfort-related cues and general presence, but there is room to deepen the emotional model without storing images or tracking performance. We also want to expand the mobile app into more of a shared reflection space, where users can look back on their rhythms, mood trends, and environment patterns over time. And, in the future, we imagine optional shared “gardens,” where multiple Koris can exist in the same connected virtual space, supporting accountability in a way that feels communal, not competitive.

Hardware: Given the constraints of the hackathon, our current build is a hand-assembled prototype, and the next step is to refine it into something leaner and more manufacturable. This means designing custom circuitry to replace the direct wiring approach, improving heat management, and further tightening the internal layout so Kori becomes leaner, quieter, and more powerful. We also plan to iterate on the case design itself, experimenting with new textures and colors themes, and even different servo resting forms so Kori feels even more like a small spirit living in your space. Ultimately, the goal is to make Kori feel like something that belongs on your desk not as a device, but as a companion you grow alongside.

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