A printed puppet theater for the living room

Doodle Theater

Kids draw the cast on paper cards. Claude names each drawing and writes an episode about them, and three servos act it out on a printed stage.

Ages 6–12
1,300–2,000 CZK (about €50–80)

Act

Play a round

Tap a drawing to put it under the camera. The first three get clipped onto the rods. Pick a backdrop and start the show. While it runs, tap another drawing: it waits next to the stage and takes over a rod at the end of the scene.

Names, quirks and lines here are pre-written for this page. The log under the stage shows what the theater’s code checks before a servo moves.

Before the show

The stage is empty. Put three drawings under the camera.

What the code checked

The log fills up as you play.

The drawing table

6 drawings left on the table.

Under the camera

The frame is empty.

On the rods

Rod 1empty
Rod 2empty
Rod 3empty

Backdrop castle forest sea

Theater file

Act

The wow moment

The first 30 seconds

My 9-year-old son puts his drawing of a cereal-box robot into the frame and presses the big button. The camera takes one photo. A few seconds later the speaker says: “This is Bolt. He collects odd socks.” There is a red sock hanging from the robot’s hand, and nobody pointed it out to the theater.

The swap

Halfway through the episode my 6-year-old daughter finishes a snail in a top hat. She puts it under the camera and presses the button. At the end of the scene the narrator sends Bolt off to look for a sock, rod 1 drops behind the stage edge, and she swaps the cards. “And then, very slowly, Sir Shellby arrived.” Her snail rises, bows and apologizes for being late.

Example episode, written for this page

NarratorBut tonight the gate was locked, and the key had vanished.
Bolt · rod 1Calculating… calculating… jumping! [jump]
NarratorIt didn’t work.
Puff · rod 2Is it dark in there? I don’t do dark. [hide]
Daughter (6) puts her snail under the camera and presses the button.
NarratorBolt rolled off to look for a sock he once saw under a bed. [rod 1: hide]
Rod 1 drops behind the stage edge. She swaps the cards.
NarratorAnd then, very slowly, Sir Shellby arrived. He carries his house everywhere. [rod 1: step forward]
Sir Shellby · rod 1Good evening. Sorry, I started walking here on Tuesday. [bow]
Son (9)He’s going to take forever.
NarratorThen Sir Shellby has an idea.
Sir Shellby · rod 1My shell has a spare key. I keep everything in here. [jump]

Act

Why a tenth time

The theater remembers its cast, and the kids keep drawing new ones.

The cast keeps growingEvery named drawing stays in the theater file. After a few weeks there is a shelf of characters, and the snail who was late in episode 2 is still late in episode 9.
Each episode picks up the last oneClaude gets tonight’s cards, the backdrop and a short summary of earlier episodes. Last week’s castle party can turn into this week’s problem.
Drawing is the moveThe crayons stay next to the stage during the show. A new card changes who is on stage at the end of the scene, so the 6-year-old has a real turn that doesn’t depend on talking.
Two kids, one stageEach child draws their own characters, and the story has to get a dragon and a cereal-box robot through the same evening.

Act

What AI adds

Everything Claude does here starts with a photo of tonight’s cards.

It names the drawing. A cloud with legs and blue drops becomes Drizzle, who rains a little when he laughs. The quirk comes from what is on the card.
It writes the episode for these three cards and this backdrop. The theater file goes along, so returning characters remember what happened to them.
It brings in a new character mid-show. When a card is swapped, the old character gets a way out and the new one an entrance with its name and quirk.
It suggests a move and a light for each line, from the theater’s list. The code checks every suggestion before a servo turns.

Without Claude the theater could still move the rods and play recorded stories. It would never know that tonight’s dragon sneezes soap bubbles, because an hour ago the dragon didn’t exist.

Act

How it’s built

Five printed parts, four servos, a camera on an arm and a Mac that does the talking.

Printed parts

1Stage baseHolds the four servos, the ESP32 and the speaker. Three slots in the floor for the rods.
2ProsceniumThe red front arch. The LED strip runs along its bottom edge as footlights.
3Back wallA slot that holds the backdrop card upright.
4CurtainPrinted thin and lifted by the fourth servo.
5Camera towerAn arm that holds the ESP32-CAM above the card frame. The big button sits next to the frame.

The three rods get large clips for the cards. Everything is PLA, about a kilo of it. Each part fits the MK4S bed (250 × 210 × 220 mm), and the MMU3 prints the gold trim on the red arch in one go.

Electronics

An ESP32-CAM sits above the frame and takes one photo per button press. A second ESP32 in the base drives the four servos, the WS2812 strip and a small I2S amplifier for the speaker. Both talk over Wi-Fi to the Gateway, the Mac at home. The Gateway runs the theater code, keeps the theater file, asks Claude for names and episodes, and turns every line into speech with Piper.

Parts list

My own split of the 1,300–2,000 CZK estimate, October 2026. The Mac, paper and crayons are already in the house.

Part	What it does	CZK
PLA filament, about 1 kg	theater, curtain, rods, clips	400–600
4 servos (SG90 or MG90S)	three rods and the curtain	240–440
ESP32-CAM with USB board	one photo of each new card	200–300
ESP32 DevKit	servos, lights, sound	120–180
WS2812 LED strip, about 0.5 m	footlights	80–130
MAX98357A I2S amplifier and speaker	narrator and voices	120–160
Big arcade button	“new card in the frame”	30–50
5 V power supply, wires, screws	power for both boards and the servos	110–140
Total		1,300–2,000 CZK (about €50–80)

Architecture

Where code ends and the model begins

Code does

Takes a photo only when the button is pressed, and only of the frame.
Keeps the theater file: characters, quirks, episodes.
Holds the move list (step forward, bow, jump, hide), the light presets and each servo’s angle limits.
Checks every line of the episode before anything moves. A move that isn’t on the list gets swapped for one that is, or dropped.
Ends the scene and picks the rod for a new card: the character who has been on stage longest leaves.
Plays the Piper audio, runs the servos and lights, and falls back to saved episodes without network.

The model does

Looks at the photo and names the drawing.
Invents its quirk.
Writes the episode from tonight’s cards, the backdrop and the earlier episodes.
Writes the lines for the narrator and each character.
Suggests a move and a light for each line, from the list it was given.
Writes the farewell for a character who leaves and the entrance for a new one.

Act

Safety and offline

VoicesThis version has no microphone. Piper speaks the narrator and the roles on the Mac, so every voice in the show is made at home.
CameraThe ESP32-CAM points straight down at the card frame and takes one photo when the button is pressed. It never streams. The photo shows the card and sometimes a hand.
Rules in codeClaude’s episode arrives as lines with suggested moves. The code checks each one against the four moves, the three rods and the servo limits before a servo turns.
Small partsNo coin cells: the theater runs on a 5 V supply. Servos, boards and screws sit inside the base. The clips are fixed to the rods and too big to swallow, and the cards are paper.
AccountClaude runs on Dad’s account with a system prompt written for kids’ stories. Anthropic allows products for minors with safeguards like these.
OfflineWithout network the theater plays saved episodes with characters from the theater file. New drawings get their names when the network is back.

Act

Roadmap

First playable prototype

One weekend.

A one-piece stage with two servos and two rods.
Camera, speaker and an episode from Claude with moves from the list.
The backdrop is a card leaning against the back.
Left out for now: curtain, lights, new drawings during the show and the theater file.

Full version

The theater from this page.

Five printed parts and a curtain on the fourth servo.
Three rods and LED footlights.
New drawings join at the end of a scene.
The theater file, so characters come back in later episodes.
Saved episodes for evenings without network.

Act

More ideas to try

Levers for small puppeteers. Three printed levers in front of the stage, one per rod. When a character’s moment comes, the narrator hands it to a child: the servo follows the lever, the code recognizes one of the allowed moves, and the story continues from it. A dragon that hides instead of attacking sends the episode somewhere else.
Props drawn on the spot. When a character gets stuck, a child draws something that helps, like a balloon for crossing a river or a key to the tower. Claude names it and picks from a list how the story uses it, the code checks the pick, and the card goes into a fourth clip as a prop that stays in the theater file.
Voice turns. Twice per episode the story stops, and a child holds the button and says what the character does next. whisper.cpp turns it into text on the Mac and Claude carries on from there. This one needs a microphone on the button.

Status: an idea. Nothing on this page has been built or tested yet, and the demo is a simulation with pre-written answers. Prices are estimates from Czech shops in October 2026.