With the political division in the US becoming increasingly polarized and the tech industry turning just about everything "smart" and integrated with AI, I figured it was time to summon the smahtSticker! The smahtSticker is an AI powered "smart" bumper sticker designed to let you blend in to any part of town. It features a Raspberry Pi Zero paired with an ~8" LCD and GPS module to pinpoint your exact location while you're driving. With this data we turn to one of OpenAI's cutting edge AI models to accurately* predict the most likely political view of that area. The response is then used to display the appropriate bumper sticker to fit you, and your car, right in.
*Using zip codes to determine political preferences is not super accurate. There are many additional factors that should be analyzed for accurate predictions, but this is all fun.
Waow. So, what's actually happening?
The GPS module is reading your location every second. If it detects you have moved 25 feet it uses geopy to get the zipcode of where you are. If the zipcode is different than the last zipcode that was checked, it sends a predefined message to openAI to get the probable political view of that zipcode. Its response is then used to randomly pick one of the 6 bumper stickers for that political view and display it on the LCD.
Since we are asking ChatGPT what it thinks the political preferences of areas are I figured it's only appropriate to also ask for suggestions regarding the types of bumper stickers to display. Seen below, I asked it what types of stickers a conservative person would have, as well as a liberal person.
did I mention it has AI?
Huge disclaimer: I don't actually drive around with this thing. It's mainly a joke on tech and politics!
- PI Zero
- HSD088IPW1 1920x480 LCD with Driver Board
- These displays require configuration to work with Pi. Luckily there's this!
- GPS Module
- Project boxes or 3D print stuff.
- Configure Rpi to Kiosk Mode
- Install OpenAI & create an API key
- Install
python-dotenv
, create an .env file and slap your api key with in a variable namedOPENAI_API_KEY
- Install Openbox and configured it to run
main.py
on startup. Steps 3-9 here are helpful. No need for chromium. - Install
adafruit_gps
,geopy
, andfeh
- Connect GPS module to 5V, GND, and TX & RX pins of Pi.
- You will need to host a hotspot off your phone that the Pi can connect to.
- Should be ready to go! Reboot.