Claude Build Day · Claude Creator Commons · Bengaluru · 26–27 Sept 2026

PawBridge

We built a dog-request detector in a cardboard box. In two days.

It notices when a dog may want something, and it never claims to read the dog's mind. PawBridge isn't a “dog translator”: it collects signals from sensors and video, reasons over the available evidence, and tells you what it observed, what it might mean, and how confident it is.

View on GitHub Team post on LinkedIn

The PawBridge prototype: buzzer, ultrasonic trigger, mic and LCD display in a hand-drawn cardboard box — The prototype lived inside a shipping box. Buzzer, ultrasonic trigger, mic and LCD, labelled by hand.

48 h

idea to demo

builders

~17 s

trigger to answer

passing tests

the problem.

Dogs signal all the time. Owners miss it. “Translators” overclaim.

1
Nudging a hand or the device
often repeated, easy to brush off
2
Pawing or pushing things
a possible play or attention cue
3
Hovering nearby, watching
quiet signals busy owners don't see

Existing “dog translator” products label emotions and needs as fact. That didn't sit right with us. So we flipped it: show the evidence first, then suggest a possible meaning with a confidence score. Never a verdict.

What that looks like

boardcame within 7.7 cm, device still, 0 taps
visionplay bow, gaze on a tennis ball
audiotwo brief bark-like sounds
→ possible play invitation · confidence 0.66

the build.

Saturday morning

A notebook, a bare board and a box of jumper wires.

The ESP32-H2 board on a breadboard next to a notebook — **The board:** a Glyph H2 (ESP32-H2), Bluetooth-only, no Wi-Fi. That shaped everything. **Second problem:** the RGB LED never lit. We swapped it for an LCD later.

Saturday afternoon

Cardboard, a cutter, tape, and a breadboard that finally answered.

Wiring the breadboard inside the cardboard enclosure — Enclosure from a shipping box. Sensor holes cut by hand. The first live distance reading on the laptop was when it started to feel like a device.

inside the box.

Sensors wired on a breadboard inside the cardboard shell

1Ultrasonic sensorthe trigger: under 30 cm starts a run
2MPU6050 motion sensortaps, pawing, stillness — 10 readings/s
3Glyph H2 (ESP32-H2)runs the firmware, USB to the laptop
416×2 LCD + buzzer + LEDthe device answers on its own

how it works.

One trigger, six steps, ~17 seconds.

1
Trigger
0.3 s
Dog (or a hand, for the demo) comes within 30 cm.
2
Capture
3 s
Motion readings 2 s before to 3 s after, plus a video/audio clip.
3
Clean + local rules
< 0.1 s
Summarise the motion; rules give an instant possible intent. No internet needed.
4
Claude agent team
≈ 14 s
An orchestrator (Claude Opus) sends 4 key frames to a vision agent and a spectrogram to an audio agent (Claude Haiku), in parallel. Never raw audio.
5
One action
instant
Attention request · play invitation · curiosity · calm, with a confidence and caveats.
6
The device answers
instant
Buzzer pattern, LED blink speed, LCD text. Dashboard shows the same run live.

Offline? The rules pick the action. The device always responds.

sunday, it works.

Hand near the sensor. Seventeen seconds later, a beep.

PawBridge live pipeline dashboard during a demo run

The live dashboard: trigger, capture, cleaning, rules, Claude agents and action, step by step.

PLAY INVITATION
via Claude

possible play invitation

Rules said curiosity · 0.50. Claude, with the clip: 0.66.

visionplay bow, gaze on a tennis ball
audiotwo brief bark-like events
board7.7 cm, no taps — device not pawed

Claude's own caveat: “The playful signals come only from the clip, not the sensor board.”

what we learned.

“The hardest part wasn't getting an answer from AI. It was getting an honest one.”

1Make honesty a rule, not a hope. Our code rejects any AI answer that doesn't start with "possible".
2Always have a fallback. No internet, dead buzzer, missing sensor: the demo still ran.
3Cardboard first. One loop working end to end beats a perfect plan.

We didn't win. We gave it a fight, shipped a working device, 72 passing tests and a live demo, and learned more in two days than in most months.

Team Techno Crackers debugging together at the venue — Best two days of debugging.

the team.

Four people, one box, two days.

Team Techno Crackers

Venket Raj S
Naiyar Hasnain(me)
Sampath Sanka
Syed Owais

Firmware, bridge service, Claude agents, dashboard, cardboard engineering and a 3-minute pitch. All built between Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon.