[8BitsAndAByte] are back and this time they’re using AI to create an interactive storyteller. With the help of a Raspberry Pi, they upcycled an old Cold War era radio they dug up and the results are pretty impressive.
The main controller board of the radio was intact, so it was easy to use all the preexisting hardware to control the speaker and to trigger a few of the Pi’s GPIO using the buttons and switches on the radio’s front panel. To add some artificial intelligence, they used Google’s AIY Voice Kit, allowing them to tap into Google’s seemingly endless artificial intelligence platform. This could be a “tables have turned moment,” but we’re probably being a bit too hopeful.
Anyway, they used a pretty interesting piece of software called Dialogflow that creates a somewhat natural conversational interaction akin to a chatbox. Dialogflow processes speech to text, as you would expect, but can also interpret contextual speech and provide contextual responses. Pretty neat…but maybe also a little creepy. Who knows? The jury is still out.
That radio is a collectible that is valued between 100 and 150 euros in working condition. And could be used with external audio input. It’s not upcycling, but misusing old hardware. He could have made a docking station with the new hardware, using the posts on the bottom of the radio and make a way cooler, and ’60 sounding radio.
I have the same model but from Blaupunkt, I think they came from the same factory. My father bought it somewhere around 1965 and I would never destroy it for this kind of mod.
Its a very sensitive and durable radio, it still works very well/
Does it use a software form of Story Telling Dice?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=story+telling+dice&hvadid=80333100073345&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvqmt=e&tag=mh0a9-21&ref=pd_sl_84mfzs8pql_e