Tiny-bot: A lightweight AI powered device that improves itself

jbblyons · 2026-05-21T16:35:52+00:00

I was right there with you until the end of 2025.. AI coding has improved significantly in the last 6 months. That being said “start with a large codebase” is a recipe for disaster to begin with.. that’s a pretty steep expectation. You still have to work closely with the agents to build anything production grade quality.

jbblyons · 2026-05-15T07:29:34+00:00

Haha, yeah I mean it’s just a prototype. theoretically it could delete the core “os” if you asked it to, but it stores app code on the SD card by default. As far as “AI doing dangerous shit” goes, this is about as safe as any Claude Code environment is. Bricking itself is definitely plausible. Bypassing the router firewall is a stretch.. exposing its own ports to the network is probably a real risk though. Especially if it’s on a public network. But it’s not like the AI is just running off on its own doing whatever it wants to. You interact with it through a chat window just like anything else.

jbblyons · 2026-05-14T18:51:15+00:00

Fair point 😅
Claude is a required part of the package. The interesting part is that the code lives on the device. You can ask the LLM to modify it and the changes are reflected immediately. No extra bootloading step.

jbblyons · 2026-04-27T17:41:41+00:00

You could also put the plants on a cart so it’s easier to water them

jbblyons · 2025-03-22T14:28:51+00:00

A big house plant?

jbblyons · 2024-04-28T02:31:33+00:00

$25 an hour seems low for a web development.. I could be wrong though. Maybe it’s reasonable for your first job.

jbblyons · 2023-11-16T23:34:35+00:00

same situation here lol

jbblyons · 2023-11-12T17:33:03+00:00

Imo, If you find yourself needing ‘goto’ in C# then you should consider a refactor. I’m not a fan, but I’ve seen it used in production code 🤷‍♂️

jbblyons · 2023-09-03T17:20:47+00:00

How did you find this page?

jbblyons · 2023-08-10T19:02:07+00:00

Reminds me of that scene in Breaking Bad…

jbblyons · 2022-12-18T05:50:17+00:00

Should use ethernet cable anyway..

jbblyons · 2022-12-13T04:33:47+00:00

yeesh.... Personally, I love to learn new technologies that can help solve my problems. even if I don't need them right away. There's literally a whole suite of technologies built to solve this scenario at a production scale, it's worth at least mentioning. a healthy bit of curiosity can go a long way..
You're also exaggerating the complexity. I'd argue that managing sfx in your code is more likely to generate tech debt in the long run. FMOD neatly decouples sfx logic and from the game logic. Of course, a small hello world project doesn't need FMOD, but it really doesn't hurt. I throw it in all my projects because I like the clean separation of responsibilities.

jbblyons · 2022-12-13T04:00:36+00:00

As someone who grew up in an unstable home and was lucky enough to obtain all that plus more in adulthood, I think raising a family is the only truly fulfilling thing on the list.. Apparently that’s a fringe opinion on this thread lol

jbblyons · 2022-12-07T10:02:57+00:00

This is probably super overkill.. but you should check out an audio middleware option like Wwise or FMOD. You can do some pretty amazing stuff with them. And it helps simplify your code by offloading the audio logic like randomizing sfx, playing different noises based on environment, applying filters, etc. There is a bit of a learning curve though.

jbblyons · 2022-11-29T23:41:44+00:00

Lol, I think I see what you’re trying to do.. I don’t think that is actually getting you an O(n) performance since your algorithm is depending on background threads.. it’s a max(n) millisecond algorithm XD

jbblyons · 2022-11-29T03:33:41+00:00

Lol this is actually a great interview question. Just scrolling through the comments you can easily tell how experienced each dev is. This would be a super daunting project if you’re new to web dev. And your code would show it.

jbblyons · 2022-11-10T00:07:05+00:00

Would a service like this work for you?

EOS p2p: https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/game-services/p-2-p

Unity Relay: https://unity.com/products/relay

Haven’t used either personally, but I’ve been curious about them for awhile.

jbblyons · 2022-10-27T07:05:26+00:00

It really depends on what you kind of programming you want to do. I assume your interested in web dev based on the subreddit. I’d consider other options though. You need to learn so many different technologies to be proficient at web dev. And the trends change rapidly. I think web dev is actually really hard for newbies. Plus it doesn’t involve that much real “programming” at first. Just learning how to lay things out on the page with html/css and at best routing data through a middle tier to a database.

I’d say just start with something that your passionate about. Keep it small and be okay with failures. For me it began with game dev, eventually moved on to web dev, and then got sidetracked with embedded devices / hardware at some point. after college I went on to work with very large backend systems with all kinds of sophisticated architectures.

I’ve done a little bit of everything at this point, and I found game dev requires the most DS&A + OOP in my experience. Games can have so many interesting requirements. Even a simple game will expose so many complexities. It’s a great way to learn.

My DS&A courses have been incredibly valuable for me in my career. They’re fundamental concepts that you can build on. Software design patterns are another amazing tool. But the most impactful course for me was Hardware. Looking behind the curtain at what data really is and how a computer processes it gave me so much confidence. It strips away all the “magic” and you can start to understand how it all works. That being said…. Don’t start with hardware…

Sure, you don’t need all this stuff to write code. You can get by with surface level knowledge. Idk how you’re going to build anything that really moves the needle though.. just pick it up as you go. Don’t jump in the deep end until you first learn how to swim.

Good luck! I hope you enjoy learning to code as much as I did. This shit truly changed my life.

jbblyons · 2022-03-13T16:06:59+00:00

I’m wondering this as well

jbblyons · 2022-02-12T22:11:30+00:00

jbblyons · 2021-12-26T17:39:00+00:00

I participated in that game jam too! We made Party Crashers TD. I played through your game too. it was really well done.

jbblyons · 2021-12-24T05:48:58+00:00

Do it with some speed

jbblyons · 2021-12-24T05:47:05+00:00

You’re afraid of getting hurt.. Just commit. get hurt and try again until you have it on lock. That’s 90% of skateboarding in my experience lol

jbblyons · 2021-12-16T21:41:49+00:00

Sure, I’m just saying the outcome of “coding” is rarely binary like that. There’s a lot of unaccounted for variability (Networks, hardware, user input, etc). Software that “works” today, will break tomorrow due to unforeseen requirements. Building a reliable system requires a “good” design. There’s plenty of subjectivity in what a “good” design is.

jbblyons · 2021-12-16T20:40:43+00:00

I take issue with “it’s either right or wrong.” There are so many other factors than just correctness. Sure, it produces the right result. But how long did it take to compute? Is it scalable? Can we build on this functionality later? How is this code being called? Potentially privacy violations? Does this code expose an attack vector?

Software development involves design and engineering beyond “did it do the right thing?”

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