Utilizing an AI like Claude actually appears like residing sooner or later — although it might be a considerably dystopian future. However all of that LLM magic occurs up within the cloud. Your pc or smartphone is just within the combine to present you a solution to talk together with your synthetic pal, nearly like engaged on a glorified terminal. That’s why it was fully potential for Ben James to combine Claude into an outdated Brother AX-10 electrical typewriter.
Like different electrical typewriters from the period, this Brother AX-10 is absolutely digital. It reads keypresses similar to your pc’s keyboard does, then tells the motorized paper feed and typing component tips on how to transfer.
That operation allows two essential options that have been essential for this venture: the power to intercept key presses and the power to inject key presses. James used an Arduino Nano board for each features. It interfaces with the keyboard matrix by means of a set of 4 multiplexers: one every for columns and rows, for each enter and output.
The Arduino communicates with a Raspberry Pi Zero W single-board pc, which runs a Python script for sending prompts to the Claude API and receiving solutions. The Arduino appears to be like for key presses and sends them to the Raspberry Pi, which passes a immediate to Claude when it sees the Enter key. As soon as the Raspberry Pi will get a response, it sends the textual content again to the Arduino to simulate key presses.
The result’s a totally typewritten log of conversations with Claude. Who wants Claude’s chat historical past operate when you’ll be able to keep a submitting cupboard filled with these printed logs?
