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Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores

(www.walmart.com)
156 points Sean-Der | 2 comments | 12 Oct 25 14:15 UTC | HN request time: 0.417s | source

Alt link: https://mrchristmas.com/products/santas-magical-telephone

Video demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z7QJxZWFQg

The first time I talked with AI santa and it responded with a joke I was HOOKED. The fun/nonsense doesn't click until you try it yourself. What's even more exciting is you can build it yourself:

libpeer: https://github.com/sepfy/libpeer

pion: https://github.com/pion/webrtc

Then go do all your fun logic in your Pion server. Connect to any Voice AI provider, or roll your own via Open Source. Anything is possible.

If you have questions or hit any roadblocks I would love to help you. I have lots of hardware snippets on my GitHub: https://github.com/sean-der.

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patapong ◴[13 Oct 25 23:17 UTC] No.45574367[source]▶
This is such a fun use of AI! Congratulations. If you buy the walmart version, can you connect it to your own pion server?
replies(1): >>45575106 #
Sean-Der ◴[14 Oct 25 01:05 UTC] No.45575106[source]▶
I would buy a dev board + build it yourself, you will get a much better experience then trying to reuse the existing thing.

I have written implementations target at specific boards. So go and buy one of these and boom stick it in anything you want. I have done this for my kids and have a bunch of different characters. My favorite is my daughter has a toy that pretends to be 'the ocean' it is so funny and existential.

* https://github.com/Sean-Der/realtimeai-embedded-respeaker-li...

* https://github.com/Sean-Der/realtimeai-embedded-esp32-s3-box...

I really loved the Sonatino[0], but can't get it anymore :(

If you start building something shoot me an email and would love to help! I want to unblock/enable this space so bad, I think these kinds of projects are just so delightful :)

[0] https://sonatino.com

replies(2): >>45575679 #>>45580695 #
1. patapong ◴[14 Oct 25 14:44 UTC] No.45580695[source]▶
Thank you for your response! Appreciate making it open source.

I think there would be a market for a pre-built phone that can be adapted to behave differently - think e.g. as a phone in art installation or escape rooms.

replies(1): >>45581125 #
2. Sean-Der ◴[14 Oct 25 15:20 UTC] No.45581125[source]▶
I would love to do that.

What I really wanted to build was a 'tour guide'. I could walk up to a piece of art in the museum and get more info on it. It would also be multilingual. At my local museum all the art descriptions are English only.

Might be too disruptive for a museum though. I want to discourage screen use/let people continue to use their eyes when learning.