A 1970s Texas Instruments Silent 700, which combines a keyboard and thermal printer, has been connected to a local AI so that answers arrive on paper. The device, called Termi3, prints a response two or three seconds after a question is typed. It was built by Cameron Coward.
Earlier versions needed an internet connection to query Wolfram Alpha, but Termi3 runs a 2 GB local LLM on the Arduino and works entirely offline. Coward notes that its answers are sometimes reasonable and accurate, and other times baffling or hilarious.
A modern local AI does the thinking, but the output device is still a 1970s paper terminal. The intelligence got newer while every reply still arrives as a printout.
Spend too long in selected phone apps and the small AI pet on your desk starts getting sick. PolyMO changes its face and internal state when screen-time limits are exceeded, and it does not recover until the offending app is closed.
In normal use it can chat, read notifications aloud, and show needs such as hunger or boredom. Instead of presenting screen time as another number or warning, it reacts like a tiny creature whose condition visibly worsens when you keep scrolling.
Maker brenpoly built the system with Android monitoring app usage and sending state changes over BLE to an ESP32-S3 device. The unit has a 1.8-inch AMOLED display, microphone and speaker, while the phone runs local language, speech-recognition and text-to-speech models.
You do the scrolling, but the little creature gets the consequences. That is an impressively effective place to put the guilt.
A modern local AI does the thinking, but the output device is still a 1970s paper terminal. The intelligence got newer while every reply still arrives as a printout.