The Tamagotchi was the toy every 90s kid carried, and its newest version, the Tamagotchi Paradise, turns out to be very hackable. Maker Squalius has built a small USB-to-UART adapter that plugs into the toy's link contacts and connects it straight to a web browser. In the demo the Tamagotchi then runs DOOM and a Game Boy emulator playing Super Mario Land on its little colour screen.
How the adapter works
The Paradise normally talks to a second Tamagotchi through metal prongs on its body, using a serial (UART) link. Squalius used a cheap CH340G USB-to-UART board and wired three of its pins to short pieces of 4 mm nickel strip. The strips are threaded through slits in a 3D-printed case and folded back, so they press on the toy's contacts like spring-loaded pogo pins. To the Tamagotchi, the PC now looks like another Tamagotchi.
With that link, browser tools such as Paramix Studio and Paradise Tools can talk to the toy from Chrome. The protocol itself was documented by researcher GMMan in his open Tamagotchi Paradise research repository, which also notes that the toy runs on a Sonix SNC73410 microcontroller, a modern 32-bit chip rather than the tiny 4-bit parts of the original 1996 toy. That extra horsepower is why DOOM and a Game Boy emulator fit at all.
Key details
- Toy: Tamagotchi Paradise (Bandai)
- Adapter: CH340G USB-to-UART board, three wires, nickel-strip contacts, 3D-printed case (files on Printables)
- Software: browser-based Paramix Studio and Paradise Tools
- Demos: DOOM and a Game Boy emulator running Super Mario Land
Our take
UART is the first thing to look for on almost any gadget, and this is a fun lesson in why: a link port meant for two toys to swap gifts ended up being a full doorway into the device. If you have a CH340 board in a drawer, this is one of the cheapest reverse-engineering projects around.
Image credit: Squalius, frame from the YouTube video, cropped and resized.
About the author: Aswinth Raj is an electronics engineer and the editor of CircuitDigest, where he has published more than 150 hands-on projects and tutorials across Arduino, PIC, ESP32, Raspberry Pi and EV battery systems. He selects the stories on this page for what engineers and makers can actually learn or build from. Connect on LinkedIn
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