Comment by rpastuszak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rpastuszak | Hacker News Reader

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Playdate (the came console) is amazing for this! I was really bored once and built a Claude Code remote control for Playdate.

Voice recognition was done via parrot + handy.computer Basically: different key combos were tied to different actions, e.g. \

    - hold A to speak
    - move the crank slowly to navigate
    - crank super fast to send the prompt

Eventually this became a universal remote control for the computers in my home (YAML file with bindings from Playdate UI → A11y events). Using the crank to control movies is fun!

(I can share the source -- just let me know if this is actually useful)

Also, I feel like the author and me have similar hobbies. A few years back I almost won a (re-sellable on Ebay) award for https://meat-gpt.sonnet.io !

(I lost to a gallery of 3d sandwiches)

I really wanted to like the Playdate but it's such an unbelievably overpriced and underspecced toy. But the crank, which really looked like a gimmick, is oddly quite nice to have and I wish my kids' Retro Arcade had one.

I mean it's 100-160 mHz CPU, 16 MB RAM, 4 GB storage -- you could run diablo 1 on it!

Yeah in retrospect I really got it wrong with “underspecced.” I really should have said “not colour.”

This all comes as a retrospective comparing it to my kids handheld for their MakeCode Arcade projects. The device that was 4x the price ended up on a shelf and I find myself borrowing theirs. I just wish it had that dumb crank. It’s so weird and yet I love it.

The lack of colour is actually quite cool (and it’s a fun creative constraint). But the lack of backlight and usb (iirc) is annoying. The first because you can’t use it in bed and I like to play something cosy/silly in low light (https://untested.sonnet.io/notes/obsidian-for-vampires/).

The second - because now I need a companion app/script to handle comms over WiFi (bonjour). You can use cable, but if I could pair this with my phone… as a personal assistant - that would be amazing!

I have one too and it never occurred to me to use it for anything other than games. Would be interested in seeing how you did it!

OK, I'll clean it up and post it in a few days

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