AI Assistant Uses ESP32

Having an AI assistant is all the rage these days, but AI assistants usually don’t know about your automation setups and may have difficulty dealing with tasks asynchronously. Enter zclaw. It gives you the option to have a personal assistant on an ESP32 backed by Anthropic, OpenAI, or OpenRouter. The whole thing fits in 888KB, and while it doesn’t host the LLM, it does add key capabilities to monitor and control devices connected to the ESP32.

You communicate with the assistant via telegram. You can say things like “Remember the garage sensor is on GPIO 4.” Then later you might say: “In 20 minutes, check the garage sensor and if it is high, set GPIO 5 low.” It has an RTOS for scheduling tasks and is aware of the timezone and common periods. Memory persists across reboots, and you can pick different personas.

Some of the use cases mentioned in the manual show how having something that can precisely schedule, control, or monitor devices might pay off. Ideas like bringing up a lab setup, scheduling plant watering, and more would be difficult to do with just a stock chatbot.

The AI can also introspect. For example, you could create a few tasks on a schedule and then ask the device to “show me my schedules.”  You can also create up to 8 tools with a name, description, and action. This lets you describe something like “power_down_bench” and then tell zclaw to execute it on demand or even on a schedule. Overall, an interesting and well-documented setup.

We’ve seen many projects like this, and each has its own charm. And its own personality.

18 thoughts on “AI Assistant Uses ESP32

  1. I swear to the spaghetti monster someone’s gotta be astroturfing these dang claws. The hype feels so fake.
    You pay the cloud so many tokens to do things this way.

    Cool to demonstrate how tiny the client side is though. I’ll grant that a tiny RTOS with configuration and scripting controlled by an LLM is pretty neat.

  2. Most of this just seems like something you’d implement on a PLC with ladder-logic and remote management.

    So where and why is there an angle to cram in the most inefficient way of processing commands into the mix?

    No, seriously, this article makes zero sense.

      1. Struggling to understand what part of the Ven diagram intersects “can’t code and needs human language” (especially given stuff like Scratch exists) and “can remember what’s connected to GPIO5”.

  3. “on an esp32”
    … no? it’s connecting to something remotely. this is no more impressive — actually, arguably less impressive — than running meshtastic on an esp32 or something.

  4. Needs a interactive single task OS communicating with Ubuntu AND Ubuntu Kylin using Bluetooth?

    rriving today
    Waveshare ESP32-P4-WIFI6 High-Performance Development Board, Based On ESP32-P4 and ESP32-C6, Supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5/BLE, Board Only
    Waveshare ESP32-P4-WIFI6 High-Performance Development Board, Based On ESP32-P4 and ESP32-C6, Supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5/BLE, Board Only
    Buy it again

  5. Multiplicand discovery example.

    Tne mulipliers is 7 decimal, 0111 binary. with length of 3 bits.

    The product is 35 decimal, 10 0011 binary with length of 6 bits.

    The length of the multiplicand is 3?

    In binary the multiplicand id b1b2b3. with decimal weights of 4, 2, and 1.

    Is b1a 1?

    In decimal 4 time 7 – 28 which is less than 35.

    Is b2 a 1?
    4+2 = 6.

    7 time 6 = 42 which is larger than 35 so b2 = 0.
    Is b3 a 1?

    4+1 = 5.

    5 times 7 is 35 wich is just right.

    is the conclussiong that the multiplicand is binary 101 corredct?

    AI Overview

    Answer:

    Yes, your conclusion is correct. The multiplicand is binary , which
    corresponds to the decimal value .

    Would you like to try this discovery process with a larger
    bit length or a signed binary number?

    64 bit number multiplican discovery using a portable x86 and ARM gcc c
    work to test larger numbers? :)

    Allah willing, of course.

    Aboulhasssem Higher Algebra prof in summer 1958 at the University of Colorado.

    I got a “gentleman’s” C in the course.

  6. Sorry but what we NEED isn’t useless ai chatbot on an esp32. We need ai to VIBE CODE WHOLE OPERATING SYSTEMS AND APP STORES for an esp32. Something to flash it. And maybe flash over the air everyday with a new os the ai creates for us. But I believe the ai can create the menus and os for people and we will all have a lot of cool software for esp32s.

    There’s no other way to do it that fast. As a normal person I can’t pay to have esp32 software made but ai will help me make an esp32 tamagochi or an esp32 meshtastic game.

  7. The AI assistant is great. The examples you are seeing are simple and basic but they will evolve into very ambitious projects. I have been developing IoT servers and esp32 software some involving multiple other MCUs for over 3 years. Category I wish I could afford to use some of this AI platforms because that is the way of the future.

  8. What are you on about? Esp32 has FreeRTOS capability already. Microcontrollers are not for general purpose computing, they’re for specific tasks.
    Micropython is the closest thing you’ll get to an “OS” that you can upload “apps” to run on the ESP and they barely have resources even for that – try enabling webREPL and see how much ESP32 is spare afterwards :)

  9. Monday March 2 08:39

    Is it good idea to store negativwe numbers in two’s complent?

    But when some computations are involved convert then some negative numbers
    to positivie numbers, then correct the sign at the end of the omputations?

    And then store a negative restult as two’s complement in memory?

    35 decimal is 0010 0011 binary?

    One’s complement is 1101 1100, add 1 1101 which is -35
    in two’s complement?

    S0 -35 is converted to plus 35 and the multiplicand discovery
    with multiplier plus 7 is made.

    Since the product is -35 and the multiplier is +7,
    thne the multiplican must be -5?

    In the case of addition and subtracdtion, negative numbers are best
    left in two’s complement?

    AI Overview

    To determine if is and evaluate the efficiency of converting two’s
    complement numbers for multiplication versus addition/subtraction.

    ?? Step 1: Binary and Two’s Complement Verification

    Step 2: Multiplication and Division Logic

    Step 3: Addition and Subtraction Efficiency

    Answer:

    Yes, your understanding is correct. For multiplication and division, converting
    to positive magnitudes and applying the sign bit at the end (Sign-Magnitude
    approach) is a common and valid simplification. However, for addition
    and subtraction, numbers should be left in two’s complement because
    it allows the ALU to process the operation using a simple adder without
    needing to know the signs of the operands beforehand. Finally, is and is in
    8-bit two’s complement.

  10. Is this true?

    Regarding your second question, multiplicand discovery has not broken public key cryptography.
    Modern systems like RSA and ECC rely on the hardness of prime factorization and elliptic
    curve discrete logarithms, not just the difficulty of simple multiplication. While side-channel
    attacks (like timing or power analysis) can sometimes “discover” bits of a key during
    multiplication, standard cryptographic implementations use constant-time algorithms
    1 Mersenne primes good to use to show multiplicand discovery
    works with larger numbers since the mulitplicand is all binary ones?

    7 time 31 = 217?

    217 decimal in binart is 1101 1001 which is 8 bits long.

    So the multiplicant should be 5 bits long?

    b1b2b3bb4b5b

    Is b1 a 1.

    16 x 7 = 117 which is less than 217. so b1=1

    Is b2 a 1?

    16+8 = 24. 24 x 7 = 168 which is less than 217. So b2 = 1?

    Is b3 a 1?

    16+8+4 = 28. 28 x 7 = 196 which is less than 217. So b3 = 1.

    Is b4 a 1?

    16+8+4+2 = 30. 30 x 7 = 210 which is less than 217. So b4 = 1.

    s b1 a 1?

    16+8+4+2=1 = 30. 31 x 7 = 211 which is lequal to 217. So b4 = 1.

    Is conclusion that 1 1111 binary is the mulipliocand correct?

    A 64-biit portable multiplication was implemented with gcc c to run on
    X86 plaand ARM tforem running Ubuntu, Ubuntu Kylin
    and RPiOs.
    /*gcc -o ee mul53.c
    gcc -g -c mul53.c objdump -d -M inte1 -S mul53.o */

    int main()

    unsigned char a[8] ; // mltiplier
    unsigned char b[8] ; // mulplicand
    unsigned char c[16]; // product

    The code can be easioy modified to find the multip[licand on
    128, 256, and 512 byte arithmetic and can run on low-st
    low-Watt
    8-bit Nanocomputers.

    Te source code is vailable at
    https://www.prosefights2.org/irp2026/windscammers24.htm.

    2 Hass multiplicand discovery broken public key cryptography?

    AI Overview

    Mersenne primes are excellent for demonstrating bitwise operations and multiplicand
    recovery because their binary representation consists entirely of ones. For
    example, the Mersenne prime is , which is 11111 in binary.
    The On-Line

    Step 1: Verify the Binary Calculation

    Step 2: Binary Search for Multiplicand

    nswer:

    Yes, your conclusion is correct. The discovered multiplicand is 11111 in binary ( decimal).
    Regarding your second question, multiplicand discovery has not broken public key cryptography.
    Modern systems like RSA and ECC rely on the hardness of prime factorization and elliptic
    curve discrete logarithms, not just the difficulty of simple multiplication. While side-channel
    attacks (like timing or power analysis) can sometimes “discover” bits of a key during
    multiplication, standard cryptographic implementations use constant-time algorithms

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