Hacking meaningful connections with humans by talking to (toy) rodents
summary
A giant soft pompom contains a Wi‑Fi Arduino running CircuitPython that publishes touches via MQTT to a Raspberry Pi e‑ink display which calls the ChatGPT API and renders ASCII art and short mottos, and a hacked toy hamster uses a Raspberry Pi Zero W with an I2S MEMS mic, PWM audio output passed through a low‑pass filter and voltage divider, records WAV, sends audio buffers over MQTT and plays them back — demos mostly work though latency and flaky hardware show up.
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chapters (8)
- 0:00Introduction
- 2:20Career change struggles
- 5:51Project motivation and ADHD
- 7:58Giant Pom-Pom demo
- 14:18Hamster walkie-talkies
- 16:38Building hamster audio
- 27:08Follow silly ideas
- 27:55Q&A
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