A look at Roger Zelazny's 'Lord of Light,' a science fiction novel blending Hindu mythology with futuristic technology, and its intriguing history, including alleged CIA interest and attempts to suppress its distribution. The article details the book's unique premise, its influence on other works, and the reasons behind the CIA's reported concerns.
LEGO has unveiled a new 'smart brick' that can detect how it's being played with and react accordingly. This brick, developed in partnership with Wired, uses a combination of sensors and AI to understand building techniques and provide feedback. It's designed to inspire creativity and learning through play, offering features like pose detection, color recognition, and shape identification. The brick is part of LEGO's ongoing efforts to integrate technology into its building system, aiming to create more interactive and educational experiences.
OpenClaw is an open-source project that allows you to turn a Raspberry Pi into a capable AI agent. It provides a framework for connecting large language models (LLMs) to physical sensors and actuators, enabling the Pi to interact with the real world. This article details how to set up OpenClaw, including installing the necessary software, configuring the LLM, and connecting sensors like a microphone and camera. It also explores potential applications, such as home automation, robotics, and environmental monitoring.
This week in Python on Microcontrollers, we have the CircuitPython 10.1.0 release candidate, a new guide for AI on microcontrollers, and more!
We’ve been experimenting with using large language models (LLMs) to assist in hardware design, and we’re excited to share our first project: the Deep Think PCB. This board is designed to be a versatile platform for experimenting with LLMs at the edge, and it’s built using a combination of open-source hardware and software. We detail the process of using Gemini to generate the schematic and PCB layout, the challenges we faced, and the lessons we learned. It's a fascinating look at the future of hardware design!
This guide documents the setup of OpenClaw on a Raspberry Pi 5 w/ 8GB RAM and how to give it access to a TFT display, temperature/pressure sensor, USB camera, and NeoPixels. It uses eSpeak text-to-speech and Whisper Small speech-to-text to enable speech based communication with the bot.
OpenClaw is a personal AI assistant you run on your own devices. It answers you on the channels you already use (WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Google Chat, Signal, iMessage, Microsoft Teams, WebChat), plus extension channels like BlueBubbles, Matrix, Zalo, and Zalo Personal.
Train your neural network in TensorFlow or PyTorch, and run it inside CircuitPython using a single line of Python code.
Adafruit and the maker community are criticizing Qualcomm's new terms of service for Arduino, citing concerns about user data, reverse-engineering restrictions, and a departure from open-hardware principles. The article also details the history of Arduino and its origins in the Wiring project.
The Adafruit Feather Bluefruit Sense takes the popular Feather nRF52840 Express and adds a comprehensive set of sensors, making it an excellent wireless sensor platform with Bluetooth Low Energy, native USB support, and Arduino/CircuitPython compatibility. It features environmental and motion sensing capabilities including 9-DoF motion sensors, proximity/light/color/gesture sensor, PDM microphone, humidity sensor, and barometric pressure sensor.
