Show HN: I built myself a friend. | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I built myself a friend.

github.com

17 pointsorangethirty19 comments

Uhm, an Arduino with a single LED that switches on and off randomly? That's probably the first thing in any Arduino book. It's great you've found a friend but that's hardly news worthy, right?

The first webcam was aimed at a coffee pot. Point is, just because its simple right now, doesn't mean it won't evolve over time. This is a long term project that I'm sharing so others can join in on the fun. Everyone needs to step away from the startup from time to time and just hack for fun.

Its also simple because a lot of people here dont have an idea of how to blink an LED. This will allow them to learn.

Also: Upvoted, because its a fair question/point.

Post it once it evolves. Save your hardware hello world for yourself.

I love this idea. Sure, one day it could evolve into what we might of now as a "robot friend," but I view this as an experiment in what humans can find patterns in. We're known for things like finding faces everywhere and ascribing meaning to randomly flashing blinkenlights. We're deeply social creatures. I'm not surprised at all that we'd feel like the little Arduino, with its blinking lights and maybe other basic actuators, connects with us. Rather than trying to build as comprehensive a robot as possible, this becomes an exploration of the minimum robot possible that one can build an emotional connection with. It's an awesome idea.

Exactly. I'm already planning on building chunky a case. If people can spend money on organic pets, why can't I have a silicon one?

I also have a remote control car laying around somewere... :)

MVR, Minimum Viable Robot. I like it.

I made a little python shell kind of thing where I type various commands like "weather" or "bit"(coin) to get status from online sources for those topics. The prompt is an emoticon based on whatever the last temperature it retrieved was. Smiles for nice weather, frowns for too hot, etc. Because why not?

Haha, at the moment it seems like a quite boring friend, but if you'll do cooller stuff with it(like adding some kind of way to communicate with it) I would really like to try it.

I swear to Zeus that when I read this post aloud to chunky (its name), it started bliking franatically. :) Try it out. Follow the repo. I plan to add some cool (cheap) sensors and stuff to it.

Cool project! Your readme would be greatly helped by the addition of a picture of LEDee

Thank you. Right now LEDee is very simple so no picture is really needed. Once it evolves a bit I will update with pictures.

When there are no pictures, people will create their own images in their minds which are probably wrong. You don't want that.

You mean they will be forced to use their imagination? LEDee is meant to be about one thing: having fun and using your imagination to hack.

if you really want to learn more about embedded device programming, you should start digging deeper. Arduino library can only give you that much, it is not even remotely interesting to for your robot development in the future. I would recommend reading avr libc and see how much you could learn to do to make your robot cool :)

Here is the project I'm working on (it works on arduino as well): https://github.com/wukong-m2m/NanoKong

Are you trying to create Hal?

Yes.

But not with LEDee. That would be Nuuton.

No you didn't. You wrote 47 sloc and a readme.

This is not noteworthy.

It sounds like you are actively trying to be rudely dismissive. It's not necessary. Furthermore, not everything on HN needs to be "noteworthy"--fun little personal projects are great to read about sometimes.

Did you look at the code? Even calling this a "project" is a stretch.

I don't disagree, but describing things generously is okay sometimes. I'd rather be part of a community that supports learners than one that mocks them for their baby steps.

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