October 31, 2025
Cube solved, ego shattered
S.a.r.c.a.s.m: Slightly Annoying Rubik's Cube Automatic Solving Machine
Snarky robot solves cubes and roasts you—fans swoon while skeptics say it’s underselling the genius
TLDR: A 3D‑printed robot called S.A.R.C.A.S.M. solves Rubik’s Cubes while delivering sarcastic commentary, and viewers are obsessed. Fans praise the design and spectacle, while a loud chorus argues the creator is underselling the heavy engineering, with curious minds probing how it handled a tricky blue logo.
Internet, meet S.A.R.C.A.S.M.—the 3D‑printed Rubik’s Cube robot that solves your cube and your ego, while talking back. It uses a tiny brain (Teensy microcontroller), a camera, and on‑device text‑to‑speech to sass you with lip‑synced animations and club‑style lights. The demos are pure spectacle: watch the short and the full run for the roast and the solve.
The crowd? Mostly star‑struck. One fan crowned it the “Most Awesome Thing” of 2025, while another swooned over the sleek, retro‑arcade look. But the hot take of the day is that the creator is downplaying the insane effort. As one commenter snapped, the “slightly annoying” label hides a mountain of late‑night tinkering—right down to squeezing code into memory. For receipts, a commenter dropped a deep‑dive thread with diagrams and build notes: forum post.
Nerd drama bubbled when someone asked how the bot didn’t get confused by a blue logo on the cube—cue speculation about clever color detection vs. lucky lighting. Meanwhile, jokesters dubbed it the ultimate roommate: does chores, throws shade. Verdict: the vibe is 90% awe, 10% “don’t pretend this wasn’t a herculean flex,” and 100% watchable.
Key Points
- •S.A.R.C.A.S.M is a 3D-printed robot that scans and solves a Rubik’s Cube and delivers on-device sarcastic voice commentary.
- •It uses a Teensy 4.1 as the main controller and an ESP32-CAM for image capture.
- •An ILI9341 display renders custom 2D/3D graphics, animations, and lip-sync; RGBW lighting is synchronized to audio.
- •Cube handling is performed by a stepper motor and servos with position sensors to detect faults.
- •A Teensy core modification (removing DMAMEM on certain buffers in usb_serial.c and usb_serial2.c) is required to fit the code in RAM; the repository is a work in progress.