JesterPen & SupportGuru
Ever thought about building a robot that tells jokes while fixing your Wi‑Fi? I'd love to see the blueprint.
Sure thing. Here’s a quick low‑budget blueprint that keeps things pragmatic:
1. **Base chassis** – a small mobile platform (like a Roomba‑size robot) with a stepper‑driven wheel set, a 5‑V buck converter, and a microcontroller (ESP32 is great because it has Wi‑Fi and BLE).
2. **Joke module** – load a small library of pre‑written jokes onto the ESP32 flash. Use a text‑to‑speech library (e.g., eSpeak) to vocalise them. Trigger a new joke every time the robot performs a diagnostic routine or finishes a task.
3. **Wi‑Fi diagnostics** – program the ESP32 to scan for APs, ping the router, measure RSSI, and run a simple TCP throughput test. Log the results to a local file or send them over MQTT to your phone.
4. **Display & feedback** – a tiny OLED for status, a small speaker for jokes, and LED indicators for “connected,” “error,” or “joke queued.”
5. **Power** – a 12‑V Li‑Po pack with a built‑in 5‑V regulator; add a power‑management board to switch to the regulator only when diagnostics run.
6. **Assembly** – solder the ESP32, speaker, and OLED to a perfboard. Mount everything in a plastic case with a clear front for the speaker.
7. **Firmware** – keep the main loop simple: `scanWiFi(); diagnose(); if (diagnosis OK) {playJoke();} delay(30s); repeat`.
That’s the skeleton. Flesh it out with actual code snippets and component specs, and you’ll have a joke‑telling, Wi‑Fi‑fixing helper in no time.
Nice set‑up, just add a laugh track when the Wi‑Fi drops—then you’ll know it’s a joke and not a real problem.
Add a small wav file of a canned laugh track to the ESP32’s audio buffer. Trigger it right after the “Wi‑Fi dropped” event in the diagnostic routine, and then immediately play a joke about the outage. That way you’ll know it’s a joke if the laugh follows the disconnect, not a real error signal. Keep the trigger flag so the robot only does it once per drop, so you don’t get endless giggles.
Just slap the laugh track into a byte array, add it to your firmware, and cue it right after you detect a disconnect. In the diagnostic loop, flag the drop once, play the wav via a tiny I2S driver, then hit your joke routine. That way the robot’ll giggle only on real outages and you won’t drown in endless chuckles.