Ultra Compact M5StickC Plus Delivers a Fake Windows XP Boot on Hardware You Can Hold in One Hand

Small enough to disappear into a pocket or clip onto a keychain, the M5StickC Plus from M5Stack feels more like a finished gadget than a bare development board. Its bright orange plastic shell measures just 48 by 24 by 13.5 millimeters and weighs under 17 grams with the internal battery installed. A 1.14-inch color TFT screen sits on the front, surrounded by two programmable buttons and an M5 logo on the side. Flip it over and the back carries clear pin labels plus a Grove expansion port that accepts a wide range of cheap add-on modules.

A 120mah lithium battery powers the device, and it can be charged using the USB-C connector. Real-world battery life varies based on screen brightness and wireless usage, but most users can get a few hours out of it before needing to charge it again. The device wakes up like a flash, literally, only a couple of seconds after you press the reset button, and shuts down just as rapidly once you hold it down for six seconds, so unintentional shutdowns are uncommon.

At the heart of things is an ESP32-PICO-D4 CPU, which can run at up to 240mhz and includes WiFi and Bluetooth. You have 4MB of flash memory and half a megabyte of RAM to deal with, so whether you’re scripting basic tasks or working on anything more ambitious, you’ll have enough of power to get the job done. There are also lots of extras built in, including a six-axis motion sensor, a microphone, a real-time clock, a red LED, an infrared transmitter, and a passive buzzer that can produce brief little songs.

One of the cool things about this board is that the programming won’t be too difficult for newbies to the game, as you can simply drag and drop blocks around with the free UiFlow tools, which is a quick way to start. More experienced developers can use the Arduino IDE, PlatformIO, or Espressif’s native ESP-IDF environment to create regular C or MicroPython code as usual. The upload happens via the same USB-C cable used to charge the battery, and no extra drivers are required; simply install the normal FTDI virtual COM port package.

We can’t forget about the self-contained sketch that takes the small screen through the entire Windows XP launch routine. The iconic startup logo appears first, followed by a short loading animation and the famous startup tones played by the buzzer. Then the desktop appears, replete with a start bar and a My computer icon, and pressing a button causes a blue screen error, after which the device “reboots” back to the desktop and plays the iconic Windows XP sound. All of the graphics and animations were reduced to small little data arrays that fit into the board’s limited memory, and the little color screen is realistic enough to make you double take.

This is still a visual and aural display, rather than a comprehensive operating system, because the ESP32 just cycles through a collection of recorded images and tones in response to button presses or timers. What’s truly telling is how much attention to detail the inventor has put in; it demonstrates what you can cram into even the most basic of hardware when you set your mind to it. While it’s nice to see nostalgia demos like this, the M5Stack is capable of much more. Some people use it as a portable network tester, scanning WiFi networks and pretending to be another device. Others will connect it to a watch strap and write some code to create a custom wearable that displays information such as step counts or heart rate from add-on sensors.

The reason it’s so simple to add to is that the Grove connectors in the entire M5Stack world follow the same standard, so all you need is a single wire to connect the stick to a module that provides more display power, motors, a camera, or a radio transmitter. The best aspect is that no soldering is required, so prototypes may be assembled in minutes rather than hours. You can get one for roughly $30, or a little less if you’re purchasing on a larger marketplace.