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Topic starter
2026-07-21 11:30 am
I used to be very active on the forum at one time, a long time ago. Family (not me) health, death, probate issues had me down and dropping all my secondary, hobby activities. I'm starting to ease back in to optional life activities again. My activities include:
- Both of my careers were desk bound and I've always had a fondness with working with my hands and so, I'm building on to my house adding a garage and some living space. It's slow going, but it keeps me physically active. My wife gave me a welding class at the local community college for Christmas and I built a crane attachment for my tractor. InqCrane in Action
- More to the point of this forum, I'm turning 65 in August and here in North Carolina, USA, they allow us olde farts to go back to college for free. I'm signed up for Fall Semester for a 300 series Physics class and a 400 series, Artificial Intelligence class. The professor for the AI class's only concern was that I had no Python experience. I've been correcting that with some YT tutorials and a very interesting on-line class offered by Harvard University (CS50’s Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python). Who knew, if I'd had access to free Harvard and MIT classes, I'd have been in seventh heaven growing up.
- Even more to the point of this forum, I'm working on several electronics projects that I'll want to document and get feedback and help with. I'm more on the software side and tend to need a little help on the hardware side. I'll be posting some of those here.
robotBuilder and codecage reacted
2026-07-21 4:11 pm
Sorry to hear about your struggles but glad you made it back. There's still lots to be discovered 🙂
Anything seems possible when you don't know what you're talking about.
2026-07-21 6:09 pm
Welcome back Inq!! It’s good to see you on here again!! I used to follow your threads all the time. I too, am an ‘old fart’ (80s), trying to stay busy and keeping the mind working by playing around with all this electronics ‘stuff’.
Unlike you, I’m more of a hardware type person, not necessarily the component level ‘black box’, but more like a systems person. I worked in telecommunications for many years.
These days, I dabble with Arduinos (not so much anymore), Raspberry Pi 4/5, PicoW’s, and I’ve just started working with the ESP32, as a comms interface to the Pico2W. My current project is a self-balancing robot, that will eventually respond to and answer using voice commands.
Anyway, glad to see you posting again. Enjoy!!
Regards, Lee
Topic starter
2026-07-21 6:19 pm
Thank you for you kind words and I'll certainly hope you'll chime in when I post hardware questions... One is coming up in a few minutes. 😊
My current project is a self-balancing robot, that will eventually respond to and answer using voice commands.
Do you have it on the forum yet? That's a project I really want to start also.
2026-07-21 7:25 pm
Do you have it on the forum yet? That's a project I really want to start also.
No, it's still in the early development stages (trying to get the darn thing to stay balanced). Version 1 is using a Pico2W and a MPU6050. "Future Enhancements" adds a PS4 controller with the ESP32 talking to the Pico (for movement), and then we'll swap out the Pico2W for a RPi5 and add the TTS/STT capabilities. I'm just now learning how to implement the TTS/STT capabilities on the RPi5. I'm not a (good) programmer, so it's slow going for me. I've been working in Python / Micropython, but that's probably going have to change to C/C++.
BTW, I took that CS50 course from Harvard several years ago. It's excellent (IMHO). I also took the MIT courses 6.0001 and 6.0002 taught by Dr's Grimson and Guttag. They're "Introductory" Python courses, but they went into it in depth. (It was hard! (for me)).
Inq reacted
Topic starter
2026-07-21 8:24 pm
I'm just now learning how to implement the TTS/STT capabilities on the RPi5.
A while back a friend of mine sent me a video of him chatting with one of the chat bots. I'm assuming it was just Chatgpt. Have you considered just adding a Mic/Speaker to the RasPi but pass on via WiFi to the Internet and onto Chatgpt and let it do all the heavy lifting. For mine, I was thinking I'd give it an accent (Rodney Dangerfield or Arnold Schwarzenegger) and give smart-ass replies. 🤣
2026-07-24 12:18 pm
I've been working in Python / Micropython, but that's probably going have to change to C/C++.
Not to discourage a delve into using C code for your self balancing robot project as its faster than micropython, but some folks coming to micropython from python overlook the embedded system speedups that micopython provides. And here I'm thinking about the use of the @micropthon.native and @microptyon.viper function decorators.
Its also worth a look at the words of wisdom from the micropython author.
https://2018.pycon-au.org/talks/45358-writing-fast-and-efficient-micropython/
Often just speeding up the critical portions of ones code is all thats required so it may be worth a consideration of these techniques.
Lee G reacted