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I built an AI gadget that talks and plays music on my desk

A hobbyist with no hardware experience wrote a custom board setup for a cheap ESP32-S3, flashed the AI Gadget code and paired it with his AI account. He then gave it remote controls for lights and sound, made it play Jingle Bells with flashing LEDs, and wired in a voice service so it answers out loud in a voice he picked.

How it works

  1. Probe the unknown board with esptool to identify the chip
  2. Write a custom board definition for the XIAO ESP32-S3
  3. Build and flash the AI Gadget firmware
  4. Pair it with the AI over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi
  5. Add remote commands for lights, audio, Wi-Fi and updates in new firmware
  6. Play a made Jingle Bells tune through the speaker with LEDs flashing in time
  7. Connect ElevenLabs so the gadget speaks in a chosen voice

Why it’s worth knowing

The AI is not stuck in a phone app here. It lives in a cheap board he flashed himself, and it plays music, flashes lights and talks back from his desk.

Where it’s from

Summarized from a public post on dev.to. See the original ↗

Upgraded prompt

A ready-to-use prompt for this idea, built from research on what makes AI agents do the job right: who the AI should be, the exact steps, and a check to make sure it was done the way you wanted.

1Who the AI should be
2The prompt, with the steps
3The check when it’s done
Upgraded prompts are coming soon.

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Every idea is a real post from someone who tried it, summarized in our words, with a link to the original. App names are swapped for plain words.