Play ‘Doom’ on this tiny, uterus-shaped period tracker

Doom is much more than a classic, bloodsoaked first-person shooter known for its chaotic action, over-the-top weapons, and challenging boss fights. For some odd (but very enjoyable) reason, it’s served as a benchmark for testing basic computing capabilities for well over 30 years. Name a device——calculators, ATMs, digitally enabled tractors, and even biochips built with E. coli bacteria—and someone has likely coded it to run Doom.

The latest entry in the ever-growing list of Doom compatible contraptions is a double-dose of DIY ingenuity, however. The Linux software engineer known as Miss Molerat recently began tinkering with a pocket-sized medical gadget made specifically to keep track of her menstrual cycle. But unlike many similar commercial products, “Clotty” keeps all personal data strictly on the device itself. It never connects to an external cloud or offloads sensitive information to a company’s servers, thereby preventing any unwanted data harvesting. And it does all this on a custom, uterus-shaped minicomputer running on a Raspberry Pi microcontroller.

“I have one thing that has been bothering me for as long as I’ve been menstruating: despite my cycle being very regular, I somehow manage to get surprised by PMS each and every month anew,” Clotty’s inventor wrote on her website’s blog.

Clotty “does the boring stuff” for her by tracking her period via a Tamagotchi-like digital pet that requires attention and maintenance throughout each month. The pixelated creature’s mood shifts depending on the cycle phase, but it also can go on little quests and offer various minigames in the meantime.

“[It’s] basically some sort of adorably shaped mirror version of my own moods that serves as a reminder that I, too, am just some sort of creature that tries to stay alive and happy,” explained Clotty’s creator.

But why stop there? Clotty is powerful enough to run Doom on its itty-bitty LCD screen, which is thematically perfect given the project’s overarching, bloody motif. This means that, when not keeping up with personal health, a user can also blast through wave after wave of space demons using small onboard sensors.

The inventor admitted that Clotty is still in its “fetal stage,” but she plans to add more features like a menstrual cycle history archive, more games, and even some reproductive health trivia. It’s also a completely open-source project, so anyone can follow her online tutorials and download files for Clotty (and Doom).