Smart Poi

Moving On

TLDR:

Some old Circus Scientist services have to go, in order to move forward with new projects. This is due to Ubuntu Server upgrade (not intentional)

Outline:

There are two ways to look at things in software:

  1. Keep things compatible and working no matter what. I think of this as the “hoarder” mentality (think Microsoft)
  2. Move fast and break things (aka Google)


I guess I try to keep a happy medium, leaning towards the “hoarder” side. Right now though, something is going on that I don’t have any power to change. The Ubuntu Server version 20 which I have most of my “experimental” services on is going EOL in a few months.
I don’t have a choice – I need to upgrade all of my online projects. Sometimes this is as simple as upgrading Ubuntu in-place but due to Python version updates this time it’s impossible. Each service has to be updated and put on a new version of the server – I’m using the latest LTS version, Ubuntu Server 2024.

What is going away

  1. LED Website Indicator. I really love this project, my first fully integrated Web and IOT project. Basically nobody cared except me. I’m going to open source the Arduino code at some point, some parts are already are available on GitHub.
  2. MagicPoi old website. There is already a new version with most of the same functionality (my patreon subscribers have had access to this for a while). This was my first really large Flask website with an api accessible from ESP8266 and is a bit old and insecure now. I have a backup if anyone has data from there that they need to get back, just send me an email and I will sort you out.
  3. AI Site Generation. A fun project that was just for learning purposes really.
  4. Monkey Detector (web version with api). Another learning project, not being used.
  5. K8 Juggling. Very old fun service.
  6. Invisible Deck Practiser. Just a JavaScript version of an Android app (magic).
  7. Other personal sites not related to this blog.

Temporary disruptions

Several other services need to be migrated, this may take up to a week depending on the complexity. Expect disruptions.

  • SmartPoi Downloader
  • The new alpha version of magicpoi site (with api)
  • devsoft.co.za
  • show.circusscientist.com
  • Other personal sites not related to this blog.

Conclusion

Sometimes you have to break things in order to move forward.

Everything that is moving to the new server is going to have proper Python virtual environments with up-to-date libraries. More secure, faster, future proof.

I cloned ChatGPT Operator using DeepSeek R1

Operator is in the news – one of my friends recently shared a video of someone using it to buy stuff online. It runs on ChatGPT 01 or 03 reasoning model. DeepSeek R1 is just as good, right? Let’s clone it!

How I did it

  1. Found a tutorial online
    – of course I’m not the first person to try this
  2. Add the tutorial webpage to Aider context (to send to DeepSeek)
    – I did skim it first, looked OK, using cool libraries and stuff
  3. Add some specifications (prompt) and tell DeepSeek to make it for me.
    – using Python with Gradio and Browser Use – a way to control Chrome easily with AI.

The result

DeepSeek with Aider’s “Architect mode” did an amazing job. It required some guidance about what exactly I wanted – the tutorial was more of an inspiration than something I wanted to copy exactly. As usual there were errors and I had to spend a few hours asking the AI to debug code – as well as doing it manually on occasion. AI programming is not foolproof and will not replace us in it’s current state – it’s a tool only. A great tool – but only a tool.


I love good tools.

DeepSeek decided that it needed to record it’s progress as a gif, made up of screenshots. I didn’t ask it to do this, and it wasn’t mentioned in the tutorial either.

Here is the slideshow for “Find me the cheapest Android phone on gumtree”. It also returned the results in text format.

Conclusion

It was super fun asking my “DeepSeek Operator” to do something and then watching it click around in the browser, even working out that it had to accept cookies before continuing!

As you can see, the tools for this type of operation exist in the Open Source world already. I think that Agentic AI is almost ready to take over the browser and do a lot of your work for you – if you are willing to trust it. It could be great for research for example.

Having said that, the DeepSeek R1 model was pretty slow via api. I think that may be a problem with reasoning models in general, though. Also, it didn’t find the actual cheapest phone, I did that myself in a few seconds afterwards to double check the result.

What do you think, should I publish my Python powered OpenAI Operator clone to GitHub?

Update:

I published it! You need a DeepSeek api key for this to work*

DeepSeek Operator on GitHub

*currently the service is down again, hopefully they will find a way to scale it soon

A Cyber War is preventing me from working on Magic Poi?

News article here: https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/27/deepseek_suspends_new_registrations_amid/

Two possibilities:

  1. Deepseek is lying and they just oversubscribed (you might have noticed they went viral with the excellent R1 open source model I have been using for the past week already on SmartPoi, Magic Poi and more)
  2. Someone is DDOSSING the heck out of them because they are jealous. Is it the US govt? OpenAI? Random hackers?

Annoying

Whatever the reason (and I really want to know so I can know who to be angry at!) it is affecting my work.

Thank you so much to my Patreon supporters for their contributions, the money is already in the Deepseek API account so I’m just waiting for access to be restored(!) before I can continue.

I did get some stuff done.

Did I mention that SmartPoi is now (almost) ported to the ESP32? The only thing that is not working is the LittleFS uploading, and that is really an Arduino IDE problem – I am trying to find a work-around but currently you can use it (just fire up the SmartPoi-js-utililities and upload some images). Check out the ESP32_2025 branch – but maybe wait a month (end of Feb?) by which time it will hopefully be merged into main (the whole thing is now working on ESP32/8266 with the same code base!!). Recommended: ESP32 S3 Super Mini (available on Aliexpress). This is the actual chip that Magic Poi will run on! Don’t get it confused with the ESP32 C3 Super Mini though – that one is single core only (and half the price – I have some C3 here and SmartPoi works on there too.)

For this new ESP32 branch I have even re-enabled the UDP streaming (which you can try using the old SmartPoi Android app). The new Android app for uploading and switching pics works as well. I haven’t tested UDP yet but if you use a dual core ESP32 S3 the WiFi runs on a separate core to the display code, which means it might actaully work now (I disabled it due to stuttering images).

This is hard work

Once again I appeal for support! Please help me by joining Patreon (it doesn’t cost anything to join) and subscribe to a support option if you can.

Support me on Patreon.

I just got here, what is SmartPoi, Magic Poi and DeepSeek?

SmartPoi project – WiFi connected POV Poi

Magic Poi – Internet connected upgrade to SmartPoi (work in progress)

DeepSeek AI – Right now the world’s second most powerful large language model when it comes to coding. I use this extensively to develop open source apps faster. Cheaper than ChatGPT but not free – hence the Patreon 😉

UPDATES:

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Magic Poi 2025

Well 2024 was a good year, I feel like I got a lot done – mainly with finalising the SmartPoi project enough to be usable for December (it worked, yay!).

What is coming this year?

TLDR: doing the same thing as last year only better, faster – I just got distracted by some monkeys this month.

Right now we have one prototype with a lot of issues to address. The factory gave us the wrong buttons for example and one trace wasn’t connecting for some reason… Anyway I disabled the buttons (there is a web interface after all) and so we have something to test on while getting the next circuit ready.

So yeah I think for me it’s about getting the poi working seamlessly, and improving the user interface – I thought the buttons were going to be enough but after looking at all of the options (Multiple Timelines, Sequences, sync with friends, brightness etc) I was clearly being a bit optimistic. I recently saw someone came out with POV poi that has a screen on it (!) – is this what we need? Sounds like a battery hog to me so probably not but anyway I am looking into it.

With the web interface we still need timeline sharing, so that has to be first priority (it is directly related to the poi buttons, though – my plan was to sync with a button press originally). Also more ways to share images and maybe rate them or something.. I am rambling here but you can see there is a lot to look at.

A bit of a delay..

I have been a bit distracted so far this year, not just with the circus tricks – I got hired by a university to help with some research related to Monkey Detection (another speciality of the Circus Scientist). Never thought I would get paid to do this, but apparently South Africa is not the only country that has issues with monkeys conflicting with humans in urban environments. So I am currently working on a Machine Learning (Image Recognition) app for research purposes.

I also have a bit of a deadline this year, as my main “experimental” server running Ubuntu 20.04 is going to become obsolete in July and I need to transfer everything off of there onto a new one well before then. I know you can upgrade in place but some of the stuff relies on old libraries etc so requires a re-write anyway (or just to be thrown away) so I’m taking each deployed project and transfering to a new server. The new Alpha version of Monkey Detector is already on a newer version of Ubuntu Server thankfully.

So yeah

Give me a month (February is traditionally very slow for live entertainment here) and I expect to be posting more frequent updates to the Magic Poi project. Looking forward to getting version 0.2 out and moving closer to the Product Launch

PS:

I really plan on getting an actual product out by the end of the year, even if it is just a kit version. Please quote me on that, this thing has gone on long enough. I am ready, are you??

Boost Your Online Reach: How Multiple Related Websites Can Grow Your Business

Use your industry specific knowledge to create a related website and fill it with your own ADS. Create your own referrals with much less cost than paying for ads. I could go on, but let me start with

An Example

My own business is in the Entertainment Industry. We do high value entertainment which can run to thousands of rands invoiced for a single booking, and our customers often convert to returning customers (we get 50% returning customers on average) – so a single lead can be very valuable, long term. That is why we advertise on Google.

Many years ago we set up a page on our main site, which was in response to all of the enquiries regarding Party Venues. This was a simple service to our customers with our recommendations regarding our favorite venues in the Durban area. This quickly became the most popular page on our site, according to Analytics. Soon after I decided to branch out and create a full website using the initial list – and now this site durbanpartyvenues.co.za is getting up to 2000 visitors per month. We get 10-20 referrals from this site which converts to an estimated extra R1000-R10000 per month (guesstimate according to converstion statistics).

Since we were already paying for a web server the actual extra cost is R100 per year for the domain fee (!). Of course I spent a lot of time on the website development – first in WordPress and later Flask (Python) which made it easier to add new venues using a simple spreadsheet which makes it easier for my non-technical partner to do it.

Expanding

Last year we added capetownpartyvenues.co.za since we occasionally do entertainment in that city. This year I am working on another related services website, durbanpartyhub.co.za which will cover related entertainment services. This time we are planning on allowing our friends in the entertainment industry to pay a small fee for preferential placement (once the site gets traction).

Does this apply to your industry?

I am sure you can think of related products and services that you have inside knowledge of which can

  1. Provide informative content for potential customers
  2. Be made into a website which you create and control with your own brand front and foremost

Shameless plug

The years I spent refining this “Related Services” template has given me an unique insight into efficiently building out an effective marketing vehicle for my company – while at the same time offering a valuable service for our customers. At DevSoft, we use AI development tools to speed up, refine and enhance the website creation process. Perhaps the ideas in this blog make sense to you? If so, get in touch!

Changing times

I recently read an article on ZDNet which was talking about the new ChatGPT search and how Google Ads is going to be less relevant in future. The takeaway from that is that your organic web presence is going to be even more relevant, if paying for search placement becomes less effective. I did a test with the new ChatGPT search and “Magician for Kids parties in Durban” and “Top 10 Outdoor Party Venues in Durban” both return sites that I own at the top, organically – thankfully due to our SEO.

The article didn’t mention it in but I think social media pages (Facebook, Instagram, etc) are going to be even more important in the future – but you don’t have control over those. Owning your own content and related content is the most important thing in my opinion.

PS: check out the AI Enhanced super commercial version of this blog post here: https://devsoft.co.za/blog

Using the SmartPoi WebApp

Hello fellow SmartPoi users.

As you may know I am a professional circus performer and during the holidays I get very busy with shows. Just pointing this out in case you wonder why you don’t see any development on the project in December and January (January is holiday time for me after much hard work).

I made a quick video demonstrating the Desktop WebApp to upload images – see it here:

I might do another showing the Android app at some point, although it’s basically the same JavaScript in a web container.

And finally here is a happy holidays present – lots of 100px poi images I scraped from the Visual Poi site http://circusscientist.com/Pics_100px_5000.zip– all credits to their respective authors, originals are from https://visualpoi.zone/

Enjoy! And see you next year for the continuation of improving SmartPoi and building Magic Poi for affordable DIY POV spinning.

Best wishes

Tom

Setting up Smart Poi

Just follow the steps.

1. Go to smartpoifirmware.circusscientist.com

2. download (after changing values) – downloads a file blink.zip

3. extract blink.zip

4. open extracted main.ino in Arduino ide (I am using 1.8.19

5. Settings for Arduino:

6. Upload ->

7. Tools -> ESP8266 LittleFS Data Upload

(Don’t have the ESP8266 LittleFS Data Uploader intalled yet? Follow this tuturial to install it – on Arduino 1.8.x)

8. Open Serial Ouput in Arduino IDE (Tools -> Serial Monitor)

9. Press Reset button on D1 Mini

10. It should say “Started, some stuff about files a.bin etc, Changed to image 1 Pattern 1..”

11. Open WiFi settings (I am using Linux, Windows should be similar?) and look for AP

12. Connect to AP (Default name is Smart_Poi7)

13. Once connected to Smart_Poi_7, open the browser (tested on FireFox and Chrome)

14. In Firefox open a new tab – you should see this: 

Clicking on “Open Network Login page” takes you to the built-in controls. 

In Chrome you have to manually type in the Main poi IP address, In Chrome it looks like this:

This is just a basic web page which is on the poi already.

15. Test the built-in control page by changing the Pattern to 2. The Serial output should reflect this..

pattern change requested: 2
Changed to image: 0 Pattern: 2

16. Now you are ready to try the smartpoi-js-utilities or Android app. https://www.circusscientist.com/smartpoi-8-0-software/

If you got this far it really should work!