Esp32

[Pocster]

Completely blown away by what can be achieved in such a short time …

[Gus Potter]

Much of this is above my pay grade.. but as an SE I can report the following:

 

I'm using it as a tool to give me prompts in SE design. Prompts can be; suggestions and links to research papers, design code links and so on. This saves time thinking.. I have this info but can't find it in my large library of info. I always check the facts. 

 

I tested AI against some basic beam design, then pushed it a bit, chucked in some geotechnics.. which is a dark art. Again it served up a template that a student SE would get taught at uni. But it fell short of what is required of an SE which is the "art and craft of design".. but it still saved some time.

 

I then thought I wonder is AI will write me some VB code (not just macros) that lies behind some of my excel spreadsheets and it made short work of that.

 

If I have the will to live I'll ask it to write the VB code in excel that does a structural stiffness matrix which includes deflection. I wrote this a while back in excel for myself so I could check commercial SE software.  I other words.. write me a basic frame analysis package in excel. Now you have a free basic SE frame analysis package!

 

My better half is using and pushing AI a lot in complex areas and getting good results. 

 

For me, if you look at Grok it seems to be doubling in power every 4 to six months. That said, I feel AI is milking me for my craft so am wary that when I go off piste as an SE I'm in no hurry to give away my secrets avbout how you actually execute the art and craft of design. 

 

 

 

[Gus Potter]

On 17/08/2025 at 17:54, SteamyTea said:

Nature alarm clock, it usually tells you when it is full.

Hi Steamy.

 

I've written a PM to you but can see you have PM's turned off. 

 

Can you PM me with your contact details? 

 

Gus

[Kelvin]

Octopus use an ESP32 in their Octopus Mini energy monitor which is surprisingly good. I have one inside a waterproof outdoor socket so it can pick up the meter stats and also connect to my WiFi network. It did work inside the garage but being a metal garage the connection would drop every now and again. 

[joth]

14 hours ago, Pocster said:

Completely blown away by what can be achieved in such a short time …

Jeez I've be telling y'all to give it a try for 5 years and the response is always Raspberry Pi blahblahblah (i stop listening after the first word)

 

I've built or flashed esphome onto a couple co2 monitors, energy monitor, wled addressable strip light controller, radar motion sensor, 1-wire interfaces, a few modbus gateways,  openevse car charger, various smart light bulbs and wall socket relays, probably a bunch other things i forget now lol

I need to work through updating them all to esp32 though as the older esp2866 doesn't have enough flash for the standard stack of components I like to include in the build. 

 

 

[Pocster]

28 minutes ago, joth said:

Jeez I've be telling y'all to give it a try for 5 years and the response is always Raspberry Pi blahblahblah (i stop listening after the first word)

 

I've built or flashed esphome onto a couple co2 monitors, energy monitor, wled addressable strip light controller, radar motion sensor, 1-wire interfaces, a few modbus gateways,  openevse car charger, various smart light bulbs and wall socket relays, probably a bunch other things i forget now lol

I need to work through updating them all to esp32 though as the older esp2866 doesn't have enough flash for the standard stack of components I like to include in the build. 

 

 

I’m doing pi and esp32 .

What I really mean is chat writing the code !!

Utterly insane . Although the ‘task’ I need is simple as an ex games programmer we make everything look like it’s a ps5 !

 

[Pocster]

Chat and any other similar AI’s has just got rid of 99% of programmers. I’ve not written a line of code . But I need knowledge and understanding to implement it .

But what stuns me is this real world example .

 

Chat and I were talking about esp32p4 . I asked if it could do 3d . It said no , strictly 2d sprite based stuff . But a zx spectrum can’t do 3d … but we know with skill it can !

 

So I said what about the sega saturn ( came out to counter the PlayStation 1 - but had no polygon draw stuff , so Sega shat the bed and frigged it ) . Skewed sprites , so a cheat for polys . Then like on play station 1 as no perspective correction you could sub divide a poly to minimise texture warping .

 

(expletive deleted) me Jesus ! . It said it is possible . Explained in exact detail how to implement it and then produced the code !!!

 

Further to this ! - I haven’t slept since doing these things with chat . Because I can’t process the biblical implications!

 

I want an esp32 to read an ultrasonic sensor for water depth measuring . Sensor hasn’t arrived yet .

But ! With me writing no code ( but guiding chat ) I have 

 

An esp32 that connects to my WiFi ; retries forever if it can’t 

I can simulate the water level by typing ‘water 50 ‘ in the serial window 

This is POST to HA into a variable 

The esp32 has a fixed IP . A status page showing lots of info . Can adjust the water level on a slider on it .

Now accepts OTA updates !

Esp32 provides a heartbeat to HA . HA has an automation incase it hasn’t received a post from esp32 in a hour .

 

I haven’t slept since ! ; a completely custom water sensor . 100% coded to my exact requirements.

You got to be (expletive deleted)ing me !

 

So naturally I’m going bezerk and have already discussed other projects with chat .

 

It’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever experienced in technology . SWMBO won’t let me talk about this anymore .

p.s further to this . It will design all the 3d meshes I need . All the bitmaps - (expletive deleted) Jesus ( as I hate cad ) will do me a 3d printer model for cases etc . 

Edited yesterday at 15:13 by Pocster

[Pocster]

The only really crap thing is when it asks “ do want a mock up image of this “ . It’s usually wrong . Simply saying 6 equally sized orbs as an image . Might get you 5 or 7 of who knows what size !!

I asked chat why it was crap at this . It said it didn’t do it the “ AI renderer “ did and it has some rather wide creative interpretations.

So I asked chat to create me sprites exact to my requirements. Masking , palletised , resolution etc . It did just that !

I guess the “ AI mock up “ process is perceived as a different thing . So I don’t use that . But honestly ! I can now do anything I want !

[Gone West]

17 minutes ago, Pocster said:

I can now do anything I want !

I haven't got a clue what you're talking about, but it's great that you're getting things done, that you want.

[Pocster]

3 minutes ago, Gone West said:

I haven't got a clue what you're talking about, but it's great that you're getting things done, that you want.

Chat can write all the code for anything !!!!!!

[Gone West]

I think the last programming I did was in the early 80s using Fortran77 and I don't think the MoD would have been very happy if I'd got AI to do it for me.

[Pocster]

18 minutes ago, Gone West said:

I think the last programming I did was in the early 80s using Fortran77 and I don't think the MoD would have been very happy if I'd got AI to do it for me.

Thats the point though it can do it ! It’s amazing and frightening 

[SteamyTea]

9 hours ago, Kelvin said:

Octopus Mini energy monitor which is surprisingly good

How does it work?

Is it an optical one that reads the meter's LED pulses, or does it use an amp clamp/voltage sensor?

Our Mike modified my RPi design to run on an ESP.

[Gone West]

21 minutes ago, Pocster said:

Thats the point though it can do it ! It’s amazing and frightening 

Where does it get the information from though, if it's never published in the public domain?

[Pocster]

Just now, Gone West said:

Where does it get the information from though, if it's never published in the public domain?

You mean for something like MoD ? . I don’t have security clearance to answer that - but perhaps they have a ChatGPT equivalent just for MoD work ?

If you mean in general . How does it write code that doesn’t exist ? - 

[Gone West]

Can it truely write code for something that has never been thought of before. I thought it was only using existing information and then learning/rehashing it, to give you what you want.

[Pocster]

10 minutes ago, Gone West said:

Can it truely write code for something that has never been thought of before. I thought it was only using existing information and then learning/rehashing it, to give you what you want.

It is . But it is creating it to your specifics . It can’t just “ get the code I want “ and stick it in for everything . It’s taking known ‘bits’ . None the less it’s how it ‘combines ‘ them that effectively it produces something unique . The time saving is phenomenal!

Edited yesterday at 17:06 by Pocster

[-rick-]

There was a fairly stunning story I read of one of the AI's being fed an ancient binary from a DOS/win31/95 game that could no longer be run on modern computers. Instructions were to produce code to recreate the game. The game was a hobby project that had sat on someones hard disk for decades, never been uploaded online. The AI took the binary and produced an almost perfect clone in python.

 

AI's have some stunning capabilities when it comes to coding (as long as you are knowledgable enough to supervise them). Pure vibe coders seem to keep faceplanting once things go wrong.

[Pocster]

16 minutes ago, -rick- said:

There was a fairly stunning story I read of one of the AI's being fed an ancient binary from a DOS/win31/95 game that could no longer be run on modern computers. Instructions were to produce code to recreate the game. The game was a hobby project that had sat on someones hard disk for decades, never been uploaded online. The AI took the binary and produced an almost perfect clone in python.

 

AI's have some stunning capabilities when it comes to coding (as long as you are knowledgable enough to supervise them). Pure vibe coders seem to keep faceplanting once things go wrong.

It’s incredible isn’t it !

I asked how it ‘knew’ about sega saturn sprite frig and implementing on different hardware . Sega Saturn docs will be online - so that’s a known . Esp32 that’s a known . But to compose something new to form what I want is beyond impressive .

As chat told me 

 

• Not memorized code → I’m not pulling from a hidden repo.
• Not fully invented from thin air → I lean on established idioms (OpenGL init, LVGL driver stubs).
• It’s recomposition → I generate something new to fit you, even if it resembles a template you’d find in docs.

 

 

[Kelvin]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

How does it work?

Is it an optical one that reads the meter's LED pulses, or does it use an amp clamp/voltage sensor?

Our Mike modified my RPi design to run on an ESP.

No it’s not direct it’s connected to your account so displays what the meter has sent to Octopus rather than the energy flows at the meter. I actually use Octo Aid though  to look at the energy use data from Octopus. 

[S2D2]

1 hour ago, Gone West said:

Where does it get the information from though, if it's never published in the public domain?

Sources like stack overflow, which helped software engineers to share knowledge on a platform immediately available to everyone.

 

AI companies see that data as fair game, scrape it all and provide a more user friendly interface to obtain it.

 

The end result is playing out as we speak, contributing posts to stack overflow are tanking and will dry up. No new data to feed the models, things go south fast as technology moves on.

[SteamyTea]

52 minutes ago, Kelvin said:

No it’s not direct it’s connected to your account so displays what the meter has sent to Octopus rather than the energy flows at the meter. I actually use Octo Aid though  to look at the energy use data from Octopus. 

Right.

I want to develope my simple meter more, a winter project, now that summer is over and turnover has halved in 2 days.

[Pocster]

3 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Right.

I want to develope my simple meter more, a winter project, now that summer is over and turnover has halved in 2 days.

See now that’s where chat is perfect ! You don’t need to know ANY code . Give it a brief description of what you want . Your setup ; Mac / pc whatever . Start simple , then add to it . It will ‘forget ‘ sometimes . You then just copy n paste your last code ( keep it in 1 file to make it easier ) . Shove that in chat and it’s back in track with what you are doing . There are other ways to make the process less painless - there are restrictions. 

[S2D2]

1 hour ago, Pocster said:

See now that’s where chat is perfect ! You don’t need to know ANY code . Give it a brief description of what you want . Your setup ; Mac / pc whatever . Start simple , then add to it . It will ‘forget ‘ sometimes . You then just copy n paste your last code ( keep it in 1 file to make it easier ) . Shove that in chat and it’s back in track with what you are doing . There are other ways to make the process less painless - there are restrictions. 

To check I'm not talking nonsense I asked GPT-4.1 to replace a 30 line Python file I have to access a public API and store the returned data in a database. Took 10 minutes to write and test.

 

Given no context, it produces code that looks fine. It doesn't even vaguely work as it gets the API syntax (which is publicly documented) very wrong. Fixing it requires replacing many lines of code (which are now 56, not 30).

Given my existing script, it rehashes it to 76 lines without adding value and introducing a few unwanted side-effects. When told what the problems are, the code works, because the meat of it is the existing code. When asked to improve some timestring parsing that was written in a hurry it happily introduces bugs whilst claiming it has been improved.

 

It will get you 80% of the way there, but so will copy-pasting the documented example from your provider's readme. The rest is from you if you actually want it to work, at which point you might as well just write the code.

[Pocster]

8 hours ago, S2D2 said:

To check I'm not talking nonsense I asked GPT-4.1 to replace a 30 line Python file I have to access a public API and store the returned data in a database. Took 10 minutes to write and test.

 

Given no context, it produces code that looks fine. It doesn't even vaguely work as it gets the API syntax (which is publicly documented) very wrong. Fixing it requires replacing many lines of code (which are now 56, not 30).

Given my existing script, it rehashes it to 76 lines without adding value and introducing a few unwanted side-effects. When told what the problems are, the code works, because the meat of it is the existing code. When asked to improve some timestring parsing that was written in a hurry it happily introduces bugs whilst claiming it has been improved.

 

It will get you 80% of the way there, but so will copy-pasting the documented example from your provider's readme. The rest is from you if you actually want it to work, at which point you might as well just write the code.

Not my experience at all .

What would have taken me months to learn and write has been done in days .

Perhaps don’t give it your script , get it to write it from scratch? - see what you get then .

 

Edited 13 hours ago by Pocster