

Show HN: I built myself a friend. - orangethirty
https://github.com/orangethirty/LEDee

======
splitbrain
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?

~~~
orangethirty
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.

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

------
frisco
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.

~~~
waterlesscloud
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?

------
klrr
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.

~~~
orangethirty
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.

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

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

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

~~~
orangethirty
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.

------
pencilcheck
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>

------
mck-
Are you trying to create Hal?

~~~
orangethirty
Yes.

But not with LEDee. That would be Nuuton.

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

This is not noteworthy.

~~~
napoleond
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.

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

~~~
napoleond
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.

