The screen
Raspberry Pi + a small touchscreen
A credit-card-sized computer with a small touchscreen. It’s where Waylon lives, where the day is read, and where every game begins and ends.
You: tap it, glance at it, or ignore it.
Ryan’s home project · 2026
A household familiar built with a Raspberry Pi.
A quiet presence at home, with small moments of ritual, choice and discovery.
Waylon is an old, peculiar, curious character who lives on a small screen in the kitchen. Mostly he just keeps watch. Sometimes he reads you the day. Sometimes he sends the kids across the house with a Stone in hand to find what went missing.
“Why do I do it? To see what happens.”
“Well. Now we know.”
Waylon is a designed character — calm, dry, a little old-fashioned. He is not a person and isn’t meant to stand in for one.
01 · A moment at home
Most of the time, Waylon just waits.
The everyday use is small. Someone walking past the kitchen taps the screen to see what the day holds. It reads quietly by default; sound is always a choice.
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Quiet presence. Waylon rests on the screen, blinking now and then. Nothing asks for attention.
Tap TODAY. Waylon pulls in only what the household has allowed: the weather and the shared calendar.
Read it at a glance. A plain overview, readable from across the room. Silent unless you ask.
Hear it, if you like. HEAR BRIEFING reads it aloud. STOP BRIEFING, or going home, ends it.
Actual Waylon screens, rendered with example content. No household calendar is shown.
02 · The objects
Three things you can hold or touch.
No app to install, no headset. Everything happens through a screen on the counter, a small device in a child’s hand, and cards tucked around the house.
The Stone
A handheld with two buttons
Small enough for a child’s hand. It shows a clue, glows warm when it’s waiting, and reads a card when you hold it close.
You: carry it through the house and scan what you find.
The cards
Moon, Star and Hearth
Reusable cards with a chip inside, placed around the house. Each holds a clue or a recovered word.
You: find one, tap the Stone to it.
The grown-up side
An adult guides it all from a private web workspace called the Study — choosing what Waylon can see, writing quests, and reviewing how things went. Children never need it.
FOR BUILDERS: HOW IT’S PUT TOGETHER
The Pi is the source of truth. A small service called Cairn keeps the rules and facts of each game — who found what, which words are recovered — so nothing depends on a model remembering correctly.
Code owns facts; the character owns tone. Times, names, counts and weather come from application state. A language model may phrase an aside, never a fact on screen.
Stones are clients. Each Stone has two buttons, a small display and an RFID/NFC reader. It reports scans to the Pi and shows what it’s told.
Local-first, not offline-only. The system runs in the house, on the home network. That doesn’t mean every model runs offline — some requests may leave the house.
03 · Presence, ritual, exploration
Quiet most days. Now and then, an adventure.
The point isn’t the screen. It’s making the house itself a little more interesting — and in every game, the child holding the Stone is the hero, not Waylon.
Presence
A familiar, not a tool
Waylon keeps a calm watch. He notices the time of day, turns to white-on-black at night, and offers the occasional dry remark. The default state is stillness.
Quests
Routines become rituals
An everyday task gets a story and a few playful choices. In one, Waylon wakes to find someone borrowed my spark — and the kids have to get it back before bed.
Rounds
Exploring the house
Short hunts through real rooms. Find the cards, recover the words, bring them home to the screen. See one below.
A ROUND, IN FOUR STEPS
✓ WORKING AS OF 6 OCT 2026- BEGIN
Waylon has lost the words to a spell. A child picks up a Stone; it warms to amber.
- SEARCH
The Stone hints where to look. The Moon card is under the reading lamp.
- SCAN
Tap the Stone to the card. A word is recovered. Then the Star, then the Hearth.
- RETURN
Back at the screen, the child puts the words in order and casts the spell.
Playing together
Lantern for Two
Two players get different clues. What one discovers unlocks the next step for the other, so neither can finish alone. They split up, trade what they’ve found, and come back to the screen together.
04 · Behind the curtain
The Study and the Shelf.
Two quiet web pages on the home network, for the adults. Same paper, same ink.
05 · Where it stands
What works, and what’s still a question.
UPDATED
✓ WORKING NOW
- The kitchen screen and Waylon’s quiet presence
- The household briefing — TODAY and HEAR BRIEFING
- Stones and cards in real gameplay
- Rounds — working since 6 October
- The Study and the Shelf
? STILL EXPLORING
- More ambient objects around the house — a lamp, an e-ink display
- A small robot scout
- Openings that remember context — an experiment for this one household, not a promise
So: a wizard in the kitchen.
A Raspberry Pi, a small screen and a few handheld Stones that make an ordinary house a bit more curious. Quiet by default. Playful when invited. Built and guided by a parent, with the kids as the heroes.