Making your droid talk with Kyber Echo

01Before you start

You need three things. No tools are required.

• Your droid, powered up Give it a few seconds. The screen runs through its checks, then settles into its normal display, which means it is ready.
• Your radio During normal use, its sticks and switches trigger the sounds. The web interface only determines which sound is assigned to each control. Sections 06 onward assume that your radio is available.
• A device with a web browser Any device that can connect to Wi-Fi and open a web page: a laptop, desktop, tablet, or phone. Use the largest screen available for the initial setup because the mapping tables are wide and contain many labels. Every feature remains available on a small screen, but wide tables scroll horizontally.

02Opening the web interface

A new droid does not yet know your Wi-Fi network name or password, so it cannot connect to your network. Instead, it creates its own temporary Wi-Fi network for the initial setup.

1. Look for a network called ECHO_xxxx Join it as you would any other Wi-Fi network. The password is 12345678 unless you have changed it. The four characters at the end distinguish your droid from other nearby droids.
2. Open 192.168.4.1 in your browser Type it into the address bar exactly as written. The web interface loads.
3. Ignore the "no internet" warning The warning is accurate: this network has no internet connection. It only provides access to the droid's web interface.

Once you are connected, the address shown on the droid's screen is always the current one. When in doubt, read it there.

03The web interface at a glance

The web interface has seven pages, listed on the left. You will use a few of them regularly; the others usually require only initial configuration.

The top bar contains a light/dark switch and, when a newer software version is available, a small update badge. The bar appears on every page.

04Joining your Wi-Fi network

This step is optional but recommended at home. Once the droid joins your Wi-Fi, you can reach the web interface without disconnecting from your network. When your network is unavailable, the droid falls back to its own Wi-Fi network. No manual switching is required.

Open the Network page. It is in three parts.

Wi-Fi Status

Shows the current network, address, and signal strength. Check here first whenever the web interface is difficult to reach.

Connect to Network

1. Switch on Try to Connect to WiFi When this option is disabled, the droid does not look for your network and always creates its own.
2. Press Scan, then tap your network in the list Selecting a scan result fills in the network name and avoids typing errors.
3. Enter the password and press Connect Then restart the droid. It will connect to your saved network automatically and fall back to its own network when yours is unavailable. Its address changes with the network, so 192.168.4.1 may no longer apply. Read the current address on the droid's screen before opening the web interface again.

Create WiFi Network

Changes the name and password of the droid's own network. Leave the name blank to keep the automatic ECHO_xxxx. The password must be at least 8 characters; leaving it blank creates an open network. Changes to the name or password take effect only after the droid restarts. Until then, the current name and password remain active.

05Adding your own sounds

Upload your sound files before configuring the Sounds page. The web interface accepts both MP3 and WAV files.

Open SD Card. Drag files onto the upload area, or select the area to browse. You can upload multiple files at once. MP3 and WAV files are converted to the required playback format during upload.

Names are how sounds are identified

Every sound is identified by a number from 001 to 999, which you will select later on the Sounds page. You can add a descriptive name after the number. The droid ignores the descriptive part, but it makes the file list easier to read.

Listening before you use a file

Each file offers two ways to hear it, and the difference matters:

The Role column

Every sound plays the same way when a button calls it. What the Role column decides is what else happens while it plays — whether the mouth moves, whether the eye blinks, and whether the sound gets a channel of its own. Each file has one role, and only one.

Everything else on the droid shares a single channel: one sound at a time, and a new one cuts off whatever was playing. That is why a long song needs the Music role — set to anything else, the first beep would cut it short.

A file with no three-digit number shows a dash instead of a selector. The droid tracks roles by sound number, so 042_Leia.wav can have one and leia.wav cannot.

If a sound does not play

Check the filename first. The droid reads the first three characters, and all three must be digits. 001.wav is valid; 0001.wav is read as 000, which cannot be assigned to a button. The file remains visible in the list but cannot be played from the Sounds page.

Files uploaded through the web interface are converted automatically to the format required by the droid. This conversion does not normalize their perceived loudness. Files copied directly to the card with a card reader are not converted, so they are more likely to cause format-related playback problems.

06Channels — assigning your radio's controls

Your radio sends the droid a set of numbered channels. Use this page to assign each channel to the control it carries.

Correct channel assignments are required before the remaining controls can work. The process usually takes about a minute.

How to set them

Do not work this out on paper. Every card on this page shows its channel moving in real time, so the reliable method is to pick a channel, move the control, and watch.

1. Pick a channel from the drop-down
2. Move that stick or flick that switch
3. Watch the barIf the bar moves, the channel is correct. If it does not, try the next channel. The complete process usually takes about a minute.

If no channel makes the bar move, stop testing channels and check the badge at the top right of the page. It shows whether the droid is receiving a radio signal. Channel selection cannot work while the badge is red.

A volume knob works on sounds already playing. Turn it down halfway through a line and you hear that line fade, not the next one.

Kyberpad — connecting it to the droid

Kyberpad is optional, but it increases the number of available triggers from six to forty-five. If you do not use it, skip ahead; the three effect switches work independently, and the rest of the guide applies in the same way.

Kyberpad is a keypad that runs on the radio itself, with fifteen keys on each of three pages. The droid sees only the channel produced by Kyberpad, so configure the radio first and the droid second. Assign sounds to the keys afterward on the Sounds page.

On the radio. Configure two outputs, each on its own channel:

1. Send the Kyberpad output to a channel Full travel, no trim, no expo, and no slew.
2. Send the page switch to a second channel Same settings. Without it you only ever reach page 1.

In the web interface. The Kyberpad card at the bottom of this page needs the two channels you just configured and the number of pages you use. The remaining fields are live indicators and do not require input.

Press a key on the radio and watch the badge. It should name the key you actually pressed, on the page you are actually on. If it does, the setup is correct and everything that follows is a matter of choosing sounds. If it does not, nothing further will work: resolve it before moving on.

The web interface detects duplicate channel assignments. If Kyberpad shares a channel with a switch, knob, or its own page switch, an amber message identifies both controls so you can correct the conflict.

The Advanced section contains the values the droid expects from each key. It matches the default Kyberpad configuration. Change these values only if you have deliberately modified them on the radio. If they no longer match, select Restore Kyberpad defaults to restore the default values.

07Sounds — deciding what plays when

The Sounds page determines which sound plays for each input. The tabs across the top represent the three Kyberpad pages, plus Effects for sounds triggered directly by the radio.

Kyberpad — choosing what each key plays

The settings on the Channels page determine how many Kyberpad tabs appear. If no Kyberpad channel is assigned, no page tabs appear. If a Kyberpad channel is assigned without a page-switch channel, only Page 1 appears and the Pages field remains disabled. Assign both channels to display the number of pages selected on the Channels page: one, two, or three.

Fifteen rows, one per key, in the same order as the keys on your radio screen. Three things to fill in:

Next to the tabs there is a Stop Button box: the number of the key, 1 to 15, that silences playback instead of playing a sound. Each page has its own, and 0 means that page has no stop key. The row you choose is marked STOP in the table.

It stops the sound that is playing and any music running alongside it. It leaves the rolling and dome sounds alone — those follow your sticks, and would start again the instant you touched one.

The Effects tab

All sounds triggered directly by the radio are configured here: the rolling and dome sounds, plus the three effect switches. Kyberpad adds to these controls rather than replacing them. If you do not use Kyberpad, this tab contains all of your sound assignments. Cards appear only for controls assigned on the Channels page.

Rolling Sound and Dome Sound are the two cards with sliders. Each selects one file and loops it while its control is active, adjusting the volume and pitch within the ranges you set. Both cards use the same four sliders.

Play sends the chosen file to the droid so you can hear it without touching the radio. The button turns into Stop while it runs, and pressing it again silences it.

The dome reaches maximum volume at about half travel, while the drive stick reaches it at full travel. This makes the dome respond quickly to short movements. Both sounds ignore direction: forward and backward, or clockwise and counterclockwise, produce the same result. Both sounds fade instead of stopping abruptly.

The effect cards work differently. Each card has two rows, allowing three switches to provide six triggers. The center position does nothing, so a spring-loaded switch is a good fit.

Some radios can map a three-position channel to two push buttons installed in the radio's case, one for each row of the card. The droid still sees one channel with three states, with the center position representing no button press.

Spring-loaded push buttons can be more convenient for triggering sounds because they return to the center position automatically.

Startup Sound — a greeting when you switch on

The last card on the Effects tab plays one sound shortly after you power the droid up. Pick a sound, say how long to wait, and that is the whole setting. Choose the dash to turn it off again.

The delay is counted from the moment the droid has finished waking up, not from the moment you flip the switch. This matters if your droid joins your home Wi-Fi, because it takes considerably longer to get ready then. Counted from power-on, the same setting would fire immediately at home and after the full wait in the field. Counted from the end of startup, five seconds means five seconds in both places.

The sound's Role applies here as everywhere else: give it Voice and the jaw moves as it greets you, give it PSI and the eye flashes along. The volume knob on your radio applies too — with the radio switched off, the startup sound comes out at half volume, so a droid switched on indoors does not announce itself at full blast.

Anything you do yourself cancels it. Press a Kyberpad key, flick an effect switch or play a sound from the web interface while the droid is still counting down, and the startup sound is dropped rather than cutting across you. Once it has started, the usual rule takes over: your key press interrupts it, like any other sound.

08Jaw servo (experimental)

If your droid has a moving jaw, this feature opens and closes it in time with speech. You choose which sounds it speaks along with, then set how far the jaw travels and how it moves.

Step 1 — Pick the sounds that talk

Go to the SD Card page and find the Role column. Set every speech file to Voice: dialogue, phrases, anything with a voice in it. Leave everything else alone — beeps, whistles, scans, and rolling sounds play the same as always, with the mouth closed.

Choosing Voice does more than flip a switch. The droid reads the whole file and measures how loud the voice in it actually gets, which takes anywhere from a fraction of a second to a few seconds on a long file. A progress bar shows the measurement running, and the other selectors gray out until it finishes.

That measurement is what lets a quietly recorded line and a loud one open the jaw the same amount. Without it, half your files would barely move the jaw and the other half would hold it wide open.

The droid keeps a measurement once it has one. Move a file to PSI and back to Voice and it returns instantly, with no second measurement — the only thing that throws it away is changing the file itself.

A file with no three-digit number shows a dash instead of a selector. The droid tracks roles by sound number, so 042_Leia.wav can be set to Voice and leia.wav cannot. Renaming, replacing, or deleting a file clears its role, because the measurement described that recording and no longer applies.

Step 2 — Set how far the jaw travels

Now come back to the Jaw servo page. The two handles on the single track are the closed and open positions, shown as an angle either side of the servo's own middle: 0° is dead center, negative is one way, positive the other.

Three buttons let you check your work without playing a sound. Each drives the jaw to a position, holds it for three seconds, then lets go and leaves it there — and they work even with the servo switched off.

Start with the two handles close together and open the gap a little at a time, pressing Open after each change. Stop as soon as the jaw reaches the end of its travel — going further makes the servo push against a mechanical stop, which buzzes, heats up and eventually breaks something.

Reverse flips which way the servo turns, and nothing else. The handles stay where you put them. Whether you need it depends on how your jaw linkage was built: if pressing Open closes the mouth, turn Reverse on and try again.

Step 3 — Set how the jaw moves

Three settings shape the movement itself. The droid saves each one as you drag it.

The jaw is commanded twenty-one times a second, so Hold lands on whole steps of about 46 ms. The second figure next to the setting is what you actually get: set it to 50 and it reads 50 ms → 93 ms. That is why 50 and 90 behave identically — both come out at two steps.

Set these with a real line of dialogue, never a test tone. A steady tone is the one sound that never behaves like speech: it has no syllables, so it tells you nothing about Hold and nothing about Threshold.

Play one of your checked sounds, watch the jaw, change one setting, and play it again. Changing two at once and liking the result leaves you unable to say which one did it.

09Reading the droid's screen

The screen is your main source of status information when the droid is closed and the web interface is not open.

The screen updates only when a displayed value changes, so a motionless display is normal and does not mean it is frozen.

10Updating

When a new software version is published, the Dashboard notifies you and lets you install it.

When an update is available, a badge appears at the top of every page. Open the Dashboard. The Online Updates card shows the new version, release date, file size, and list of changes. Your currently installed version appears on the same page under Firmware.

What happens when you press install

Select Download and install. The web interface completes four steps and identifies each one as it begins. No action is required between these steps.

1. Downloading firmware… Your browser downloads the new version from the internet. The percentage shows the download progress.
2. Uploading… The browser transfers the file to the droid over your local connection. The percentage restarts from zero, and this step is usually slower.
3. Flashing firmware… Shown in amber, because this is the part not to interrupt. The droid is writing the new version into itself.
4. Rebooting in 5s… It counts down, the droid restarts, and the page reloads itself. If it does not come back, reconnect to the droid as you did the first time — the update itself is already done.

Everything you set up survives it: your sounds, your buttons, your labels, your Wi-Fi. An update replaces the droid's software, not its settings.

What the card can say

Installing a file by hand

Use the manual upload area when you receive a .bin firmware file directly. Drop the file into the area or select it with the file picker. Other file types are rejected. Select Upload to transfer the file to the droid; the process then continues from the Uploading… step described above.

11Backup and reset

Four buttons at the bottom of the Dashboard provide backup, restore, restart, and reset functions.

The backup file

Its name does not matter; its contents do. You can rename the file, archive it, or move it to another computer without affecting restoration. The web interface verifies that the file contains a valid Echo configuration and rejects invalid files without applying partial settings.

A backup taken from an older version of the droid's software is still usable. It restores what it contains and leaves everything else as it was, so nothing is lost simply because the file predates a setting.

Network settings in a backup file are deliberately skipped. You can therefore restore someone else's channel assignments, sound ranges, and Kyberpad labels without changing how you connect to your droid.

After restoring to a droid that has never joined your network, enter your Wi-Fi details manually on the Network page. Re-entering these two fields takes little time compared with recreating the rest of the configuration.

What a factory reset removes

A factory reset clears all settings, including the network configuration used to reach the droid.

Getting back in is the same as the very first time, and takes a minute:

1. Join the network called ECHO_xxxx The password is 12345678 again. Any name you had given that network is gone too, so look for ECHO_ followed by four characters.
2. Open 192.168.4.1 The web interface loads without your settings, but every sound remains on the card.
3. Restore your backup, or start again A saved configuration restores these settings in one step. Without a backup, everything from section 04 onward must be configured manually.

Change the droid's network password again immediately afterward. A reset restores the default, so remember that 12345678 is active again.

12Wiring

This section is intended for anyone building or repairing the droid. The preceding sections assume that the board is already wired.

The board

The Waveshare ESP32-S3-LCD-1.47B is a compact board that includes the display, microSD slot, and RGB LED. These components require no additional wiring. The table below lists the external components that connect to the board.

What connects where

Pin numbers are GPIO numbers, the ones printed on the board.

Still to write

• Power What feeds the board, what feeds the servo, and whether they share a ground. The servo is the part that draws current in bursts, so this is the question that decides the rest.
• The MOSFET What it actually switches on a finished droid, and whether it belongs in a user-facing document at all.
• Connectors and colors Which plug is used for each of the five, and what the wires look like, so the table can be read with the droid open in front of you.
• A photograph or a diagram The one thing a table cannot replace. Unlike every other image in this guide, it cannot be generated — it has to be taken.

13Troubleshooting

In rough order of how often each one happens.

No sound at all

Open the SD Card page and select Play on device for any file. If the file is also silent there, check the sound library and audio hardware. If it plays correctly, the problem is probably the button mapping. On the Sounds page, verify that the assigned numbers match the files on the card. A visible file that cannot be selected is usually named incorrectly; its filename must begin with exactly three digits.

Everything plays at about half volume

The radio is off, and a volume knob has been assigned to a channel. Without a valid radio signal, the droid defaults to 50% volume. Switch on the transmitter and the assigned knob takes control immediately.

I cannot turn the droid down

The web interface has no volume control; use a knob or slider on the radio. If all three volume channels are set to None on the Channels page, assign at least one. The same channel can control all three.

The web interface will not open

On the droid's own network, Wi-Fi may have turned off after one minute without a connection. Restart the droid, then reconnect within 60 seconds. On your home network, the address may have changed; read the current address on the droid's screen. The droid does not automatically reconnect after losing your network.

The radio does nothing

Open the Channels page and check the badge at the top right. A red Disconnected badge means the droid is not receiving a radio signal. Verify that the transmitter is on and bound. If the badge is green, move a stick and watch the bars. Movement on the wrong card means the channel assignments need to be corrected.

The dome sound stops while I hold the stick

That is deliberate, and it is the one place the dome behaves differently from the driving sound. Rolling follows where the stick is, so holding it keeps the sound going; the dome follows whether the stick is moving, and fades out about a third of a second after it stops. Keep turning and the sound continues. Nothing is wrong with the file.

A card or a tab is missing from the Sounds page

The Sounds page only ever shows what your droid can actually do. A missing Dome Sound or Sound Effect 2 card means that control is still on None back on Channels. Missing page tabs work the same way: no Kyberpad channel and there are none at all, a Kyberpad channel without a page switch and you get Page 1 alone.

A Kyberpad key plays the wrong sound — or plays several

Several sounds in sequence usually mean that slew is still enabled in the radio's mixer. Turn it off. Also check the Kyberpad card: if an amber message identifies two controls sharing one channel, the controls are conflicting and some key presses may be interpreted incorrectly. If the wrong key responds consistently, the radio values no longer match the values expected by the droid. Select Restore Kyberpad defaults unless you changed them deliberately. A key held while the radio starts or the signal returns is ignored until you release it once.

Everything is grayed out and nothing will upload

Your radio transmitter is on. Uploading files and installing updates both stop while the droid is hearing the radio, because the two cannot share the airwaves. An amber banner at the top of the page says so. Switch the transmitter off and the page becomes available again within a second or two, with no reload.

An update stopped partway

The previous firmware version remains active because the droid switches versions only after receiving the complete update. You should see Download failed or Upload failed; select the button again to retry. Repeated download failures usually indicate a problem with your device's internet connection because the browser, not the droid, downloads the file.

I reset the droid and now I cannot reach it

A factory reset clears the Wi-Fi along with everything else. The droid has forgotten your network, its own network is called ECHO_xxxx again, and its password is back to 12345678. Join that network, open 192.168.4.1, and restore your backup. Then change the default password immediately.

A change was not saved

Saving is automatic but not instant. The web interface waits about one second after your last change, then displays a confirmation. Closing the page or turning off the droid before that confirmation may discard the change. If no confirmation appears, the web interface may have lost contact with the droid.

None of the above

The Logs page keeps the droid's most recent messages. Open it, reproduce the problem, and read the new entries. Most failures are reported there in plain language.