Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago
Late-night in the workshop, I got lonely… so I gave my skeleton a brain and made an AI companion.
Meet Little Timmy — my ungrateful, wise-cracking AI cohost who can talk, see, hear, think, and occasionally catch on fire.
In this episode of Gears, Code, and Fire, I fuse robotics, AI, and pure chaos to create Operation Pinocchio: a half-baked mechatronic abomination powered by ESP32s, Raspberry Pi, ollama, Whisper STT, and Piper TTS. There's even a demo of the webRTC telepresence functionality with my friend Tomasz from @Mellow_labs !
From jaw-synced speech to real-time face tracking, from local language models to butane-powered flame effects, it’s equal parts engineering and existential crisis.
Little Timmy roasts my coding skills, questions my life choices, and gets remotely puppeteered from across the Atlantic—all while teaching how text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and servo control actually work.
ESP32 jaw servo control using real-time audio FFTs
Locally-run LLM (because cloud AI is for quitters)
Raspberry Pi + OpenCV face tracking and captioning
Pyrotechnic “head on fire” relay stunt (safely supervised, mostly)
A masterclass in self-deprecating robotics comedy
If you enjoy DIY robotics, AI voice models, mechatronics mischief, or just watching a grown man lose an argument with a talking skeleton.
Special thanks to @ThorstenMueller for his inspirational tutorials, @Bijanbowen for his local AI reviews, and @safetythird Patreon Discord for their help!
0:00 Opening
0:21 Timmy Speaks
1:22 Timmy Hears
1:49 Timmy Thinks
2:13 Timmy Moves
2:44 Timmy Sees
4:14 Timmy is Safe
4:45 Timmy Telepresences
6:52 Timmy Remembers
8:02 Timmy Always Be Closing
8:56 Timmy's Post-Game Commentary
Late-night in the workshop, I got lonely… so I gave my skeleton a brain and made an AI companion.
Meet Little Timmy — my ungrateful, wise-cracking AI cohost who can talk, see, hear, think, and occasionally catch on fire.
In this episode of Gears, Code, and Fire, I fuse robotics, AI, and pure chaos to create Operation Pinocchio: a half-baked mechatronic abomination powered by ESP32s, Raspberry Pi, ollama, Whisper STT, and Piper TTS. There's even a demo of the webRTC telepresence functionality with my friend Tomasz from @Mellow_labs !
From jaw-synced speech to real-time face tracking, from local language models to butane-powered flame effects, it’s equal parts engineering and existential crisis.
Little Timmy roasts my coding skills, questions my life choices, and gets remotely puppeteered from across the Atlantic—all while teaching how text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and servo control actually work.
ESP32 jaw servo control using real-time audio FFTs
Locally-run LLM (because cloud AI is for quitters)
Raspberry Pi + OpenCV face tracking and captioning
Pyrotechnic “head on fire” relay stunt (safely supervised, mostly)
A masterclass in self-deprecating robotics comedy
If you enjoy DIY robotics, AI voice models, mechatronics mischief, or just watching a grown man lose an argument with a talking skeleton.
Special thanks to @ThorstenMueller for his inspirational tutorials, @Bijanbowen for his local AI reviews, and @safetythird Patreon Discord for their help!
0:00 Opening
0:21 Timmy Speaks
1:22 Timmy Hears
1:49 Timmy Thinks
2:13 Timmy Moves
2:44 Timmy Sees
4:14 Timmy is Safe
4:45 Timmy Telepresences
6:52 Timmy Remembers
8:02 Timmy Always Be Closing
8:56 Timmy's Post-Game Commentary
