CheerLights has entered the chat… the ChatGPT.
We are experiencing the capabilities and limitations of AI collectively. After OpenAI’s Dev Day, I have been thinking of ways to learn the new features, services, and APIs that were dropped. This time of year always brings about a lot of inspiring CheerLights projects and new people joining CheerLights. This also comes with a lot of questions, as the new folks are learning IoT, looking for sample code, or just looking for inspiration on what to build. This gave me an idea and a challenge. Could I build an AI chatbot that can help onboard new people onto the CheerLights project and help them learn IoT?
If you have ChatGPT Plus, you can try the CheerLights IoT Expert bot right now.
What is CheerLights?
CheerLights is an Internet of Things (IoT) project that creates a global network of lights that change color in unison. The concept is straightforward yet powerful: any connected light anywhere in the world will change to the same color when a new color is set. This allows people across different locations to feel connected through a shared lighting experience.
Features of the CheerLights IoT Expert GPT
The CheerLights IoT Expert GPT has a lot of general knowledge of Arduino, ESP Wi-Fi devices, ThingSpeak, and CheerLights. You can ask anything from the basics to advanced things like code generation for a specific device configuration.
- Natural language interface
- Onboarding prompts to get started
- Technical support and debugging
- Idea generation
- Code generation
- The world’s most sophisticated CheerLights color checker
How it works
A Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) is an advanced type of artificial intelligence model designed to understand and generate human-like text. This is the technology that ChatGPT is built on. It’s built using a neural network architecture called a transformer, which excels at processing sequential data like language. GPT models are trained on vast amounts of text data, enabling them to learn language patterns, grammar, and context. They function by predicting the next word in a sequence, considering the words that have already been presented. This capability allows them to generate coherent and contextually relevant text responses. The more they are trained with diverse datasets, the better they become at mimicking human-like writing, answering questions, and even engaging in conversations, making them powerful tools in natural language processing.
OpenAI released a new feature where you can take the power of a foundational language model and direct it towards a specific domain. I created a GPT using all of the CheerLights documentation and blog posts that I have written over the past 12 years. I gave it additional instructions about where to find the latest CheerLights color and the fact that we no longer use Twitter/X. GPT-4 still thinks that you can set the color of everyone’s lights using Twitter (insert sad face emoji), but we are now on a Discord Server!
How to use the CheerLights IoT Expert Chatbot
If you are a ChatGPT Plus subscriber, all you have to do is load up the GPT by clicking this URL: https://chat.openai.com/g/g-E2zjJXE56-cheerlights-iot-expert
From there, just click on an onboarding prompt or type in a message.
Use Cases
Try one of these prompts to help inspire how to use the CheerLights IoT Expert chatbot.
- How do I tell which pin is the power pin on a WS2812B LED strip?
- I want a sparkle animation for a NeoPixel strip of 16 LEDs.
- How do I teach IoT to a group of kids using CheerLights?
- How do I show the latest color of CheerLights in my Chrome browser?
- Write Python code that retrieves the last 100 color changes and analyzes the data for any patterns.
- What are five ideas for a CheerLights display?
Get Started
Give the CheerLights IoT Expert bot a try. It can get things wrong, but it can also surprise you with something that you never thought of before. If it answers something incorrectly, let me know. I can always make changes and provide up-to-date information to make sure the bot gives the best answer possible. I am looking forward to seeing the creative CheerLights displays this season enhanced by ChatGPT. Join the CheerLights Discord server and share all of your awesome projects, ideas, and experiences.
Bonus Prompt
I enabled image creation with DALL-E 3, just for fun. You can ask the CheerLights IoT Expert GPT to create images inspired by the latest CheerLights color. Try this prompt: Create an illustration based on the latest CheerLights color, depicting a globe with electric lights.
