# gaucho

2026 · hardware · Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, ESP32, Python, FastAPI, OpenAI, openWakeWord, espeak-ng, YOLOv8

Canonical: https://www.sofiaferro.com.ar/en/projects/gaucho · [Versión en español](https://www.sofiaferro.com.ar/es/projects/gaucho.md)

[Live](https://x.com/gauchopaisano) · [Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydxnJeLvh0E)

Gaucho is a 1984 TOMY Omnibot —a 40-year-old robot toy— that talks again. It wakes up when it hears its name, converses through a language model, recognizes familiar faces and greets you on its own when it sees you walk by.

Inside live three pieces: a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W with everything that needs to react fast —wake word, microphone, camera and an offline espeak-ng voice—; a FastAPI server in the cloud with transcription, the LLM (with memory and web search) and face recognition; and an ESP32 running the motion firmware. The partition rule: what reacts fast and touches the microphone stays local, what's heavy goes to the cloud.

Gaucho is a [Paisanos](https://paisanos.io) project: it was born between projects at the office and became a coworker. It survived a 12-hour event on battery, judged a hackathon, gives talks at meetups and posts as [@gauchopaisano](https://x.com/gauchopaisano). There's a show about it on [the SLA stream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydxnJeLvh0E).

![Gaucho, a 1984 TOMY Omnibot with a Raspberry Pi camera between its eyes](https://www.sofiaferro.com.ar/images/gaucho/gaucho-omnibot.jpg)