Introducing Perchi, a desk companion, and Perchi Matrix

What is Perchi?

Perchi is a palm-sized, silent desk companion with a 128x64 OLED face that doubles as a phone stand; rest your phone on it and a focus block starts while Perchi visibly knits, grows or builds; lift the phone and it pauses with a look. Today we are opening reservations for it, and for its sibling Perchi Matrix, from a small team in India.

The focus block is called a Phone Nap. Three seconds after your phone comes to rest on Perchi's back a block starts, 25 minutes by default and anything from 5 to 120. A thin ring fills around the face while a scarf, a sprout or a tower grows beside it in five stages. Lift the phone and the work pauses with a disappointed look; put it back within a minute and Perchi sighs and carries on; leave it longer and the block ends as partial, with everything finished kept. Projects go into a wardrobe, and streaks forgive a missed day with a freeze. Between blocks, Perchi reacts to real events from your apps: a Razorpay or Stripe sale makes it party, a new subscriber makes it love-struck, a green build makes it proud and a red one makes it worry. It has no AI, no microphone, no camera, no speaker, no battery and no subscription. The rules are on how Phone Nap works, the category on what a desk companion is, and the product page is /perchi.

Why did we build it?

Because three kinds of gadget each hold a third of the answer. Desk pets are cute and filmable but perform a canned loop that reviewers tire of within days. Ambient displays are useful but soulless and depend on a company staying in business, as Tidbyt's owners learned when it stopped making devices in November 2024. Focus apps live inside the phone you are trying to put down. We wanted a desk creature that is on your side against your phone: it turns putting the phone down into the start of a session, and gives the phone a place to live that is not your hand.

Three principles decided the rest. Real over random: expressions come from real events, never a canned idle loop. Silent, plugged in, no chores: no speaker, no battery. Ours to keep: the focus loop, the face, the clock and the timers work offline, the local API and MQTT keep working on your LAN without our servers, and firmware updates are signed. Designed so a shutdown cannot brick it.

What is Perchi Matrix?

Perchi Matrix is a connected LED desk display: 24x8 RGB pixels (192 LEDs) at launch, driven by an ESP32-S3 running Perchi OS, with 70+ apps for creator counts, sales, deploys, calendars, weather and Home Assistant, and an authenticated AWTRIX-3-compatible local API. You pair it from a browser in under a minute, and 37 of the apps need no account. A payment or a finished build lights up in under a second with one of 14 celebration effects; polled numbers carry a freshness badge. It plugs into a 5 V supply, 3 A or more recommended for 24x8, and makes no sound; larger sizes open later on the waitlist. For makers there is a REST API, webhooks, an MCP server, the mtx CLI and SDK, and a no-code builder. The product page is /perchi-matrix, the catalogue is /apps and the developer overview is /developers.

What do the two share?

One account, one web dashboard and one app library: every app renders on Perchi Matrix as pixels and on Perchi as a card beside the face, so a Razorpay payment connected once shows on both. Both sign in with passkeys first, generate their own device key on the device, keep your Wi-Fi password and pairing code away from our servers, and take signed firmware updates that roll back by themselves; the security page lists what ships and what does not. Choosing between them is answered on Perchi vs Perchi Matrix, and two Perchis can link to each other as Perchi for two.

What is finished, and what is still waiting?

The software is finished: the firmware, the server and the dashboard for both devices are built and tested. What is still waiting is hardware. The bench pass on the first Perchi boards, which checks the OLED, the touch electrodes through a printed shell and the phone-presence thresholds on real glass, is waiting for parts; the product PCB, the enclosure and the first ten sellable units come after it. That is why this site prints no ship date and no weight, dimensions, power draw or detection accuracy: those numbers are published once measured on production units. Perchi comes in the Classic shell; Cat ears and Robot follow later, with print files to be published under an open licence.

How do batches and the wait work?

Reservations are open and nothing is charged. Batch 1 is fully reserved: we received enough reservations to fill it, so new reservations join Batch 2, shipped in the order reserved. The wait is an estimate, and the current estimate is printed on the reserve page and the shipping page from one batch table. When your unit has passed its bench test and carries a serial number we email a checkout link that holds it for 7 days; if a date moves, you hear first, with the reason. A reservation can be cancelled at any time. India ships first, with a GST invoice and Shiprocket delivery; international shipping opens with the global batch.

How do you reserve one?

Pick Perchi, Perchi for two or Perchi Matrix on the reserve page and give us a name, an email address and a country; there is no card to enter. Prices, with GST included and the MRP printed on the box, are on the pricing page. Both devices are designed and assembled in India, and the about page says who we are.

Sources

• Tidbyt is joining Modal, 7 November 2024
• Robot Review Desk: Eilik review and mia-cat.com: Eilik review on repetitive animations
• MyPerchi product facts as published on /perchi, /perchi-matrix and /security, 19 September 2026

Questions

Why is Perchi launching in India first?

Because we are here: prices are in rupees with GST included, the courier is Shiprocket, the warranty is serviced in India, and both categories here are mostly grey imports without a local warranty. Bench-testing every unit ourselves at home comes before the global batch opens international shipping.

What is built today, and what is still waiting on hardware?

Every piece of software: Perchi OS firmware for both devices, the server, the dashboard and the app library. What remains is the hardware bench pass on the first Perchi boards, then the product PCB, the enclosure and the first sellable units. Until that pass is recorded, every wait is an estimate and every physical claim about Perchi is phrased as designed-to, not measured.

Why do both devices share one app library?

Because the number you care about is the same whichever screen shows it. Every app is defined once and rendered by the same engine: on Perchi Matrix as pixels, on Perchi as a card beside the face with a mood attached. Connect Razorpay, GitHub or a calendar once and it is on every device in your workspace.