Light (now)iRaw ambient light from the sensor (0–4095, 12-bit ADC). Min/max show the range seen in the last 3 seconds. Rate is how fast readings are arriving from the ESP — typically 10–30 Hz.
--/ 4095
min 3s--
max 3s--
rate--
Internal stateiLive cell activations (0.0–1.0). Arousal spikes when light changes suddenly (novelty) and drives behavior. Fatigue builds slowly from sustained arousal and pulls it back down — this is habituation. Tonic tracks ambient light very slowly, giving a rough sense of current brightness. Structure (shown below) is arousal's accumulated sensitivity: it grows with use and makes arousal respond more strongly over time. None of these values survive a restart.
Arousal
--
Fatigue
--
Tonic (ambient)
--
Behavior & outputiThe creature's current behavioral mode and LED output. Brightness (0–255) is what the expression system computed. Sent brightness is what was actually written to the LED — may be lower if LED_MAX_BRIGHTNESS is set. Pulse delay controls the breathing rhythm in milliseconds: lower = faster breathing.
current behavior
--
direction--
brightness (desired)--
sent to LED--
pulse delay--
Light & memory windowsiRaw sensor readings against three rolling averages. Short (3s) reacts quickly to change. Medium (10s) smooths brief spikes. Long (60s) is the creature's sense of baseline — it's subtracted from the current reading to compute novelty, which is the main driver of arousal. A flat long line means a stable environment; divergence means something changed.
Internal state over timeiHistory of the three cell activations. Arousal and fatigue oscillate together: arousal rises on novelty, fatigue slowly accumulates, then pulls arousal back down. You'll see them chase each other in a sustained stimulus. Tonic is the slow ambient track and rarely moves quickly. All three reset to 0.0 on restart — this chart only shows the current session.
Learned reactivity over time (novelty → arousal weight)iThe single plastic connection weight. It adjusts every tick via homeostatic plasticity to keep arousal averaging around 15% over the long run. In a busy or stimulating environment it falls — the creature becomes less jumpy. In a quiet one it rises — the creature becomes more sensitive. Range is 0.2–2.0. This weight is saved to disk and survives restarts, so the creature picks up where it left off.
Brain state iThe creature's persistent memory — saved every 60 seconds while running and on clean shutdown. Structure per cell grows slowly with activation and amplifies its sensitivity over time (only arousal has this enabled). Avg activation is the long-run mean used by homeostatic plasticity to self-correct. Connection weights adapt over time to keep the creature balanced — only novelty→arousal is plastic. Topology (which cells connect to which) is fixed in code; only weights and structure are stored here.
Cells
Connections