Clawdmeter

A small ESP32 dashboard I made for my desk to keep an eye on Claude Code usage.

It runs on a Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-AMOLED-2.16 as well as a few other alternative boards and pairs over Bluetooth, the splash screen plays pixel-art Clawd animations that get busier when your usage rate climbs. The two side buttons send Space and Shift+Tab over BLE HID for Claude Code's voice mode and mode-toggle shortcuts.

Screens

The device boots into the splash. Tap the screen anywhere to switch to the Usage view; tap again to flip back to the splash.

Splash	Usage
Splash; touch-toggle anytime	Session and weekly utilization

While the splash is up, the middle (PWR) button cycles animations. Hold the power button for 3 seconds, then release, to put the device into pairing mode — this clears the saved Bluetooth bond and re-advertises. The firmware also auto-rotates animations every 20 s within the current usage-rate group, so a long stretch on the splash isn't just one Clawd on loop.

Hardware

Boards supported out of the box:

• Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-AMOLED-2.16
• Waveshare ESP32-C6-Touch-AMOLED-2.16
• Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-AMOLED-1.8
• Waveshare ESP32-C6-Touch-AMOLED-1.8
• Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-AMOLED-2.06
• Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-1.54
• Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-4

Please check if a pull request exists for your alternative hardware port before opening a new one, providing QA feedback and testing on the same hardware is more valuable than duplicate pull requests.

Porting to another board: the firmware is a thin HAL with per-board folders under firmware/src/boards/. Drop in a new folder and a new PlatformIO env — main.cpp, ui.cpp, and splash.cpp never need to change. See docs/porting/adding-a-board.md for the walk-through and docs/porting/hal-contract.md for the interfaces a port must implement.

Prerequisites

• Linux (tested on Ubuntu), macOS, or Windows 10/11
• PlatformIO CLI
• Linux: curl, bluetoothctl, busctl (BlueZ Bluetooth stack)
• macOS: python3 (the installer sets up a venv with bleak and httpx)
• Windows: python3 3.11+ (the installer sets up a venv with bleak, httpx, and pystray)
• Claude Code with an active subscription

macOS installation

The macOS host pieces — Python daemon, LaunchAgent, and flash helper — were ported by Chris Davidson (@lorddavidson). Thanks Chris!

Flash the firmware

./flash-mac.sh waveshare_amoled_216                       # auto-detects /dev/cu.usbmodem*
./flash-mac.sh waveshare_amoled_18  /dev/cu.usbmodem1101  # or pass an explicit USB serial port

The board env name is required. Run ./flash-mac.sh with no args to see the available envs (scraped from firmware/platformio.ini).

Pair the device

After flashing, open System Settings → Bluetooth and click Connect next to "Clawdmeter". The daemon only ever connects to the peripheral this Mac is paired/connected to — it never scans for a nearby device — so once it's connected here the daemon picks it up on its next poll (~60 s).

Install the daemon

The daemon reads your Claude OAuth token from the macOS Keychain (service Claude Code-credentials), polls usage every 60 s, and pushes it to the display over BLE.

./install-mac.sh

The installer creates a Python venv in daemon/.venv/, installs bleak and httpx, renders a LaunchAgent into ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.claude-usage-daemon.plist, and loads it. The first run is launched interactively so macOS prompts for Bluetooth permission.

Useful commands:

launchctl list | grep claude-usage                                          # check it's running
tail -F ~/Library/Logs/claude-usage-daemon.out.log                          # live logs
launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.claude-usage-daemon.plist  # stop
launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.claude-usage-daemon.plist # start

Linux installation

Flash the firmware

./flash.sh waveshare_amoled_216                  # defaults to /dev/ttyACM0
./flash.sh waveshare_amoled_18  /dev/ttyACM1     # or pass an explicit USB serial port

The board env name is required. Run ./flash.sh with no args to see the available envs (scraped from firmware/platformio.ini).

Pair the device

After flashing, the device advertises as "Clawdmeter". Pair it once:

# Scan for the device
bluetoothctl scan le

# When "Clawdmeter" appears, pair and trust it
bluetoothctl pair F4:12:FA:C0:8F:E5    # use your device's MAC
bluetoothctl trust F4:12:FA:C0:8F:E5

To re-pair later, hold the power button for 3 seconds then release — the device clears its saved bond and re-advertises.

Install the daemon

The daemon polls your Claude usage every 60 seconds and sends it to the display over BLE.

./install.sh
systemctl --user start claude-usage-daemon

Check status: systemctl --user status claude-usage-daemon

View logs: journalctl --user -u claude-usage-daemon -f

Windows installation

Runs natively on Windows — no WSL required. A system-tray app polls your usage and pushes it over BLE, and starts automatically at login.

Prerequisites

• Native Windows (not WSL).
• Python 3.11+ from python.org — check "Add python.exe to PATH" during install.
• Claude Code installed, with claude login completed. The token is read from %USERPROFILE%\.claude\.credentials.json (falling back to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Claude\ then %APPDATA%\Claude\).
• The repo on a native Windows path (e.g. %USERPROFILE%\Clawdmeter), not a \\wsl$ share — the installer refuses a WSL path.

Flash the firmware

pio run -d firmware -e waveshare_amoled_216 -t upload --upload-port COM5   # use your device's COM port

Run pio run -d firmware with no env to see the available board envs.

Pair the device

The device is a bonded BLE HID keyboard, so pair it once: Settings → Bluetooth & devices → Add device → Bluetooth, then select "Clawdmeter". Pairing is required — it enables the physical buttons and keeps a persistent connection (the device keeps showing your last-synced usage even after the daemon quits). To undo, use Remove device (this disables the buttons).

Install the daemon (recommended)

From the repo root in PowerShell:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File install-windows.ps1

This creates a venv, installs bleak/httpx/pystray/Pillow from the in-repo requirements (no internet downloads), registers a per-user login-autostart entry (HKCU\…\Run, no admin needed), and launches the tray app headlessly (no console window).

Run manually instead (optional)

python -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1        # if blocked: Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser RemoteSigned, then retry
pip install -r daemon\requirements-windows.txt
python daemon\claude_usage_daemon_windows.py        # runs in the foreground; Ctrl+C to stop

Tray icon and menu

The icon's corner bubble shows state — green Connected, amber Scanning, red Error — and hovering shows the status (Connected · last update HH:MM). A notification fires once when it enters Error (e.g. an expired token). Right-click for the menu:

• Status header — live state + last sync time.
• Start at login — toggle autostart on/off.
• Quit — stops the daemon cleanly; leaves the Windows pairing intact (device keeps its last reading).

Logs and troubleshooting

Get-Content $env:LOCALAPPDATA\Clawdmeter\daemon.log -Tail 30        # view logs
reg delete "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run" /v Clawdmeter /f   # remove autostart

How it works

1. The daemon reads your Claude Code OAuth token — from the macOS Keychain (service Claude Code-credentials) on macOS, or from ~/.claude/.credentials.json on Linux (%USERPROFILE%\.claude\.credentials.json on Windows).
2. It makes a minimal API call to api.anthropic.com/v1/messages — one token of Haiku, basically free.
3. The usage numbers come straight out of the response headers (anthropic-ratelimit-unified-5h-utilization and friends).
4. The daemon connects to the ESP32 over BLE and writes a JSON payload to the GATT RX characteristic.
5. The firmware parses it and updates the LVGL dashboard.
6. The firmware also tracks the rate of change of session % over a 5-minute window and picks splash animations from the matching mood group.
7. The two side buttons are independent of all of this — they send Space and Shift+Tab as BLE HID keyboard input to the paired host directly.

Physical buttons

The board has three side buttons. Left and right send HID keys; the middle (PWR) button cycles splash animations and, held for 3 seconds, triggers pairing mode.

Space and Shift+Tab go out as standard BLE HID keyboard reports, so they trigger in whatever window has focus on the paired host — not just Claude Code.

BLE protocol

The device advertises a custom GATT service alongside the standard HID keyboard service:

JSON payload format (written to RX):

{ "s": 45, "sr": 120, "w": 28, "wr": 7200, "st": "allowed", "ok": true }

Fields: s = session %, sr = session reset (minutes), w = weekly %, wr = weekly reset (minutes), st = status, ok = success flag.

Development

• Desktop simulator — iterate on the UI without hardware: an SDL2 window runs the full firmware loop with scenario playback (pio run -d firmware -e sim, then cd firmware && .pio/build/sim/program). See SIM-USAGE.md for controls, scenarios, and headless screenshots.
• Splash animations — Anthropic's official Clawd sprites, archived with provenance notes in research/clawd-official/; node tools/convert_official_clawd.js regenerates firmware/src/splash_animations.h. See tools/README.md.
• Icons — Lucide PNGs convert to LVGL C arrays with tools/png_to_lvgl.js. See tools/README.md.
• Fonts — the pre-compiled LVGL fonts and the LVGL-9 patching they need: docs/fonts.md.
• Porting — docs/porting/adding-a-board.md and docs/porting/hal-contract.md.

Credits

• Pixel-art Clawd animations are Anthropic's official mascot art (claude.ai/code, Claude Code desktop), archived and converted by the tooling in tools/ and research/clawd-official/.
• Lucide icon set (lucide.dev, MIT) for bluetooth and battery UI glyphs.
• Anthropic brand fonts (Tiempos Text, Styrene B) — see licensing warning below.

Licensing gray area warning

The software in this repository uses and adheres to the Anthropic brand guidelines and uses the same proprietary fonts that Anthropic has a license for but this software uses without permission as well as using assets from Anthropic such as the copyrighted Clawd mascot so even though the code in this repo is non-proprietary I will not license it myself under a copyleft license since this repo includes proprietary fonts and copyrighted assets. Please be aware of