Progress on Project Tako continues! I’m having a lot of fun (but also frustrating) conversations with ChatGPT in order to continue fine-tuning the code for this.
I guess I’m fully embracing the “vibe-coding” approach with this, using AI to continuously iterate and move the code forward. The frustrating part is linked to the AI not always grasping the concepts I’m trying to move forward, therefore still requiring a lot of direct input and manipulation of the code (at least I have an idea of what’s going on in the code!).
A great tool I’m really enjoying is the “project” feature, where ChatGPT can reference different conversations all linked underneath the same umbrella. This way you can keep topics separate (hardware, software, graphics…), but they are still linked to each other and used to move the entire project forward.
Speaking of code and UI, here are the main updates:
- New starting dashboard: control scenes (good morning/night, garage door, house music)
- Average house temperature displayed on each screens
- Better icons for the dashboard and the navigation at the bottom
Icon design took a while to get right. First I simply asked ChatGPT to generate icons all in the same style and directly at the final scale for the UI, but they looked crap. So in the end I asked AI to generate nice big icons, which I then manually re-sized to the correct scale for the project. Everything looks much nicer now!
It’s very clear (at least to me) what each icon is meant to represent, plus some of them are dynamic. For example, the garage icon will change to clearly show the open/close state. Same for the radio icon. When it’s playing, it will change from headphones to a “mute” icon, making it obvious what would happen if you click that icon.
Final update software wise is the start of the integration of Apple TV control. One button is now dedicated to switch from rooms control to each TV and back. Every time you press on the dedicated button it will cycle through all options. Each TV screen will show the state of the Apple TV (playing or idle) and in theory the buttons should be remapped to now influence UI navigation and playback control on the TV.
I say in theory as for now the only button that works as intended is the enter button that turns into play/pause control, but I haven’t found a way yet to have the other buttons controlling the rest of the UI or the playback control – a fight for another day!
The truly final update for today is that the code and icons are now available on GitHub if you are curious, you want to follow along or you want to spin your own version of Tako: https://github.com/matteodallombra/Project-Tako
This repo will also be the place where all code updates will be managed from now on as it’s way better than pasting code here on WordPress!
See you at the next update – Happy Tinkering!