LicheeRV Nano PicoClaw Expansion Board

PicoClaw Expansion Board

The PicoClaw Expansion Board is a feature extension board built for PicoClaw interactive applications, based on the LicheeRV Nano development board. It is designed for voice interaction and local display scenarios, integrating display, buttons, status LEDs, battery management, and audio peripheral interfaces to quickly build a complete HMI terminal.

The board includes a 240×240 LCD for system status, recognized text, conversation output, and UI menus. It also provides 2 onboard buttons for mode switching and confirmation, and 2 LEDs for power/running/status indication. A Battery connector is provided with charging support, with a maximum charging power of 3W. Speaker connection for voice playback is also supported.

With the customized image, the board can work with PicoClaw for real-time voice conversation: audio capture, ASR, generation, with key results shown on the LCD for a complete local interaction experience.

Main features of the PicoClaw Expansion Board:

• 240×240 LCD display
• 2 function buttons
• 2 status LEDs
• Battery interface (charging supported, max 3W)
• Speaker connection and voice output support
• Real-time conversation and result display (with customized image)

About PicoClaw

PicoClaw is an open-source personal AI assistant project for low-resource devices, written from scratch in Go. It targets complete Agent capability on low-cost, low-power hardware. The project focuses on being lightweight, fast, and deployable across resource-constrained Linux devices and multiple CPU architectures.

Key PicoClaw features:

• Ultra-light deployment: optimized for low-memory devices.
• Fast startup: suitable for always-on local interaction.
• Cross-platform: supports RISC-V, ARM, MIPS, and x86.
• Multi-channel access: supports Telegram, Discord, WeChat, QQ, Slack, and more.
• Rich model & tool ecosystem: supports multiple LLM providers, MCP, web search, and skills.
• Multiple operation modes: WebUI, TUI, and CLI.

For the LicheeRV Nano + PicoClaw Expansion Board scenario, PicoClaw provides the upper software layer for voice interaction and local display. By configuring models, channels, and tools, you can quickly build a usable local AI interaction terminal.

Project URL: https://github.com/sipeed/picoclaw

Image Download

Customized PicoClaw expansion-board image:

Download

File name: picoclaw-rv-nano-YYYYMMDD.img.xz

• Flashing method: You can use balenaEtcher to write the image directly to an SD card, or extract the .xz file first and then flash it using the dd command.

• Expansion-board side code in the image is based on Python, located at /opt/app_picoclaw, which is convenient for custom development.

Quick Start

1. Network Connection

First, access the device console. Recommended methods:

• Serial connection: Use UART0 exposed on SBU1/SBU2 of the USB connector. With a USB Type-C breakout board, route RX0/TX0 and connect using a serial tool.

• USB NIC connection: The device creates both RNDIS and NCM USB NICs by default. Check the USB NIC IP assigned on the host, then replace the last octet with 1 as the device IP. Example: if host IP is 10.166.194.100, device IP is 10.166.194.1.

Then log in with SSH or serial. Default username/password are both root. After login, follow Peripheral Usage to connect Wi-Fi.

2. Configure PicoClaw

On first boot, PicoClaw is not initialized yet. You need initial configuration first. You can use Web UI or TUI. The following uses Web UI.

Web UI Setup

Open http://<device-ip>:18080 in your browser. A token is required on first access; currently the default token is root.

Chat Model Setup

Open settings, select Model, then choose a provider and model. For example, you can use openai/gpt-5.4 as the default model.

• After configuration, click save and return to the chat page. You will see Service is not running, please start it before chatting. Click Start Service at the top-right, then wait for startup and begin chatting.

Voice Model Setup

Currently, PicoClaw's WebSocket channel does not support direct audio-stream input, so PicoClaw ASR cannot be called directly for voice conversation. ASR is currently independent from PicoClaw, but still reads PicoClaw config files for model settings.

To enable voice interaction, configure a voice model first. In the model page, click Add Model and configure an ASR model. Example: qwen3/qwen3-asr-flash.

Currently supported ASR models:

Note: keep model alias aligned with the model ID. For example, alias for qwen3/qwen3-asr-flash-realtime should be qwen3-asr-flash-realtime.

Try Voice Chat

After saving, press and hold the left KEY1 button on the expansion board to record voice input. Release to trigger ASR and send the result to PicoClaw. After processing, ASR text and reply are displayed on screen.

FAQ

• Errors during conversation

  • The model may be misconfigured, or unavailable. Check logs in Web UI for detailed errors.
  • Check /var/log/picoclaw-launcher.log and /var/log/picoclaw-worker.log for error details.
  • You can try deleting /root/.picoclaw and rebooting, then reconfigure.

• Errors when using groq voice models

  • groq is currently not accessible in mainland China. Use another provider or access through a proxy.