January 16, 2026
Bath-shaming bot, mod drama
Drawbot: Let's hack something cute (2025)
Hidden 'Take a bath' found; fans want crazier art, mods re-spawn the thread
TLDR: A hacker opened a kids’ drawbot and uncovered a secret “Take a bath!” drawing and song. Commenters called it a mini pen plotter and debated a mod re-spawn while demanding wilder art—proof that even simple toys can hide fun hacks worth exploring.
The internet fell for a cute kids’ drawing robot that got cracked open—and promptly told the hacker to “Take a bath!” This toy reads simple barcode cards to draw preset pictures, but inside it sings, talks, and hides bonus art. The teardown was gleefully impatient: recessed screws, some drilling, and a plan to catalog every drawing and add custom ones (“Put a Bird on It,” naturally). The board showed a tiny brain and two memory chips, plus a barcode reader begging to be poked.
Commenters went full peanut gallery. One camp shrugged, calling it “a small pen plotter for kids,” and demanded it draw something wild—fractals, anime, the Mona Lisa with a bird. Hype squad chimed in with “super cool teardown,” while the HN admin dropped a rare re-spawn notice, sparking meta-drama about repost etiquette. Jokes flew about a bath-shaming bot, a “circle (obviously)” card set, and the eternal hacker dilemma: patience vs. power tools. The vibe: adorable gadget, secret features, and a community itching to push this little plotter past its 256-card comfort zone—because if it can sing, it can surely draw chaos.
Key Points
- •The toy uses 100 physical cards with 8-bit barcodes, allowing up to 256 possible drawings across categories.
- •Fuzzing the barcode reader by shifting a valid card revealed an unexpected “Take a bath!” drawing not present in the deck.
- •Goals include enumerating all drawings and understanding storage to add custom images (“Put a Bird on It”).
- •Key components identified: LKS32MC07x ARM Cortex-M0 MCU, uc25IQ64 64MB SPI NOR flash, uc25IQ128A 128MB SPI NOR flash.
- •The 64MB flash was dumped via SPI; attempts to dump the 128MB flash and connect to the MCU via SWD were unsuccessful.