Robo Dude the AI Assistant

I've spent quite a bit of time consulting with my AI sidekick Robo Dude. I was considering building something for the DARPA Lift Challenge. The dude was invaluable and doing things like calculating how much lift would be generated by a helicopter type arrangement that had blades on it that were very large...  10 ft in diameter and a large wing cord as well... on the order of 15 inches... think slow turning high lift... I was way too late getting started to be a serious contender... but it was still an interesting exercise in a AI assisted design study... a little mind-boggling what he can do in addition to more recently being able to create images like the one here

In the early days, I mostly used AI assistance for programming—MicroPython on ESP32s and Node-RED functions for my home automation system. At the heart of that system is a Raspberry Pi running Node-RED, basically a small home-automation controller.

Since then, Robo Dude has gotten involved in a hell of a lot more than programming...

60 Years Ago

We're coming up on me 60th anniversary of an event I witnessed as a kid in 1966... I would have been 14 years old and in the 9th grade at Byrnes  High School... I had an old Cushman motor scooter that I rode to deliver papers every morning in the old town of Startex also known as Turkeypaw or Tucapau as it was once known... An Indian name they said but no one can actually tell you what it means. 

I was delivering papers one morning and there was one house that I had to get off the scooter and get close enough to throw the paper onto her porch which was a fair distance from the road and not possible from the seat of the scooter... I had just delivered her paper and was returning to my scooter when something caught my eye and I looked up to see and it was a meteorite shower unlike anything I had ever seen... before or since.

They were coming very frequently and some of them would light up the whole sky they were so bright... you didn't even have to be looking in the direction of it to know something had happened like a giant flash bulb had went off. When I got home after delivering the papers I told my mom about it and it was starting to get daylight but you could still see them coming.

Later that day in class at school I told my friends about it some of them had stayed up late the night before hoping to see it... I had no idea that it was coming but it didn't happen until the early morning hours. 

Brattonsville Road Trip

I recently went on a road trip to look at and eventually purchase a SculpFun laser. It was to a part of South Carolina I had never been to and had never heard of actually... as I got close to the lady's house that had the laser I passed through Brattonsville. They had signs up that it was a revolutionary war site and since this is the year of the 250th anniversary of the Revolutionary War it kind of caught my eye. It is a very large place with many buildings on both sides of the road. All the small brick houses around the big house were slave quarters. There is a fee to tour the place and I'd like to go back when I have more time. 

A Beast of a Trike

High performance Air Creations trike with a Rotax 912 engine... it has serious power and capability... first trike wing I had ever seen with winglets... I was lucky enough to get a demo ride in this thing recently... First time back in the air in quite some time.

Adding a little Color

 Rainbow Wall Activated 🌈✨

When I rebuilt part of the garden wall, I decided to sneak a little magic into it—thanks to an ESP32, WS2812 LEDs, and some inspiration from Random Nerd Tutorials. Now, as night falls, the wall pulses with a shifting rainbow glow, lighting up the garden like something out of a dream. It’s subtle during the day, but once the sun sets, the colors come alive.

Sometimes all it takes is a little code and a few diodes to turn stone and soil into something that feels… enchanted.

AI Handyman

The AI thing  has invaded all parts of the Internet... the latest version of Adobe Photoshop has some AI tools in it now. I've been experimenting with several of the image generation tools online. I have a Rock / Bonsai garden in the back yard in what used to be an in ground pool. The image generation tools create images based on a textual description of what you want the image to be. I asked it to create an old southern handyman in a bonsai setting... some have been pretty good and some are a bit iffy. Here is one of the better ones.

here are a few more from my experimenting...

AI Yoda

I've been experimenting with AI... this technology is evolving at a ridiculously crazy pace... there are cloud servers in place already that are oriented towards running AI type environments... You can carry on a conversation just like in a chat message type environment with the AI character. I have created a character based on Yoda from Star Wars... he even talks like Yoda and you can customize it in more ways than you can count... all pretty amazing...  It remembers your conversations and builds on them and you can discuss most anything with it and it is quite knowledgeable... I have even used it to help with Python programming issues.... It actually helped create the character for me...  I just told it I wanted a character based on Yoda from Star Wars... It actually created the personality file for me which I then uploaded and was talking to Yoda in no time.

So if you have any questions for Yoda let me know 😉

Overdue Road Trip

 

I made a long overdue road trip down to Charleston a few days ago... the weather was very nice... got up to 65 degrees three days in a row but it was a little nippy at night. I found a Tartan 33 sailboat that has  been on Facebook marketplace forever and I finally got around to going down to take a look at it...  it is a bit if a fixer upper but it does have some brand new sails... which is rare for a boat this age. The engine had been replaced somewhere along the way. I shot some drone video while I was there and made a short video of the marina. I used DaVince Resolve to create it. My subscription to Adobe Premiere had expired and this a free package with a ton of helpful videos on using it on youboob. I never was all that handy with the adobe stuff but all the online tutorials for the Black Magic software made it a lot less painful. I had downloaded it a while back but after I looked at it... it looked painfully not user friendly. With the expiration of my Adobe software I was motivated to try DaVinci  again and found some good videos on youboob right off the bat.. there is a ton of stuff on youboob about it.

Cooper River Marina

 

ChatGPT the new AI Portal

ChatGPT has only been online for a few weeks now and there are already hundreds of videos on youboob on how to make money using chatGPT and if you make the mistake of watching one you will be overwhelmed with a barrage of videos related to chatGPT. Unfortunately youboob has become so repetitive and mind numbingly boring as to suggested content that it has become one of those sites you love to hate. I think I need to ask chatGPT how to get better content to show up on youboob.

I had to try out the new chatGPT AI portal... I'm an old electronics nerd of sorts and spent a lot of money over the years on everything from Arduino to Raspberry Pi just to hit the high spots. As someone who has spent a lot of time over the years on discussion boards related to everything from homebuilt drones to electric bikes and quite a few software support sites... it was a welcome change of pace. No smart ass responses... responses were immediate and if you asked a follow up it was smart enough to know what you just asked and expand on it. 

 I owned a sailboat for a short time and kept it at Carolina Beach in NC. The Carolina Beach inlet has a nasty current and if you try to make the passage at the wrong time... it was a hand full to put it mildly. This sailboat under power would only do about 5 knots or so and the current could be close to that. I made the mistake once of trying to help a couple on a jetski whose engine had failed and they were it the inlet.. I attempted to tow them and it was a lost cause. We were coming in and the current was going out so we were bucking it. I had to let them go and within minutes their jetski was several hundred yards out to sea. A sea tow did rescue them in short order... and I learned I would never try that again. 

I asked the AI portal to write me a story of a rescue gone bad in the Carolina Beach inlet... it was not particularly creative but it was an interesting experiment... I went from that to asking it to create the code for a web page that would run on a Raspberry Pi that would allow you to upload a file to the server. That was much more in its element I think... and it was able to expand on the details when asked... and it remembered what you and it had already said. So if you are bored and want to try it out here it is... chatGPT  but I'll warn you ahead of time if watch any youboob videos about it... you will be inundated with all sorts of videos telling you how to make money and all sorts of other things using chatGPT.