[HN Gopher] Show HN: AI Toy I worked on is in stores
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Show HN: AI Toy I worked on is in stores
Alt link: https://mrchristmas.com/products/santas-magical-telephone
Video demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z7QJxZWFQg The first
time I talked with AI santa and it responded with a joke I was
HOOKED. The fun/nonsense doesn't click until you try it yourself.
What's even more exciting is you can build it yourself: libpeer:
https://github.com/sepfy/libpeer pion:
https://github.com/pion/webrtc Then go do all your fun logic in
your Pion server. Connect to any Voice AI provider, or roll your
own via Open Source. Anything is possible. If you have questions
or hit any roadblocks I would love to help you. I have lots of
hardware snippets on my GitHub: https://github.com/sean-der.
Author : Sean-Der
Score : 23 points
Date : 2025-10-12 14:15 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.walmart.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.walmart.com)
| jaggs wrote:
| Why is everything blocked on the Walmart link?
| leakycap wrote:
| Yeah, unfortunately this link URL is literally "blocked" -says
| so in the URL- it won't work for anyone
| Sean-Der wrote:
| Sorry about that, I reposted with a better link
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45562597
| dang wrote:
| Our software follows redirects and
| https://www.walmart.com/ip/SANTA-SMAGICAL-PHONE/16364964771
| goes through some weird redirect flow that it got stuck on.
| I've put the original link back at the top now.
| leakycap wrote:
| Congrats, that must feel awesome to see your work on a shelf!
|
| The YouTube video is great! You might want to repost with a new
| link, the Walmart link is bad (look at the URL)
| Sean-Der wrote:
| Sorry :( this link should be better
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45562597
| Jaxkr wrote:
| This is an amazing product. I don't have kids yet but I would buy
| this for them if I did!
|
| However, since this is Hacker News, I must say I'd probably enjoy
| building this myself using TTS and LLM APIs...
| mosura wrote:
| I can't help feeling this technology will end up more widely
| deployed for a related but less wholesome application.
| ivape wrote:
| How'd you manufacture something like this? How'd you get Walmart
| to sell it? How everything please. I got an idea for a mean
| talking toothbrush.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Imagine the expanded possibilities of tony the toilet buddy:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dR1m29cNVsc&t=90s&pp=2AFakAIB
| deanputney wrote:
| What happens when you use up the 60 minutes of talk time?
| hagbard_c wrote:
| Santa will tell your son or daughter to go beg his or her
| parents to pay 'santa' for more talk time:
|
| _Generous Talk Time: 60 minutes of talk time included, and
| additional minutes are available for purchase for extended
| holiday entertainment throughout the season_
|
| That's not what I understood Santa to be like.
| observationist wrote:
| Something like as follows:
|
| Rule 34.vc - if it exists, it can be enshittified.
| ugh123 wrote:
| How do you ensure 'safety' for kids talking to an LLM?
| fukka42 wrote:
| > Generous Talk Time: 60 minutes of talk time included, and
| additional minutes are available for purchase for extended
| holiday entertainment throughout the season
|
| So the thing costs a 100 dollars and then you can only use it for
| an hour before needing to pay more?
| guywithahat wrote:
| I could see charging after some point, but 60 minutes is a
| remarkably short talk time. Yesterday I had a 60 minute phone
| call about bike tires with my dad; if a child has any interest
| in the phone they'll burn through the 60 minutes
| turtletontine wrote:
| I think the bet is that kids are quite good at begging and
| pestering their parents to spend money on things, and kids will
| want to talk to Santa for more than 60 minutes. Just my guess
| rideontime wrote:
| Imagining the parent who could barely afford this only to
| discover that it dies after an hour of usage unless they keep
| feeding the meter is making me very sad.
| architectonic wrote:
| How much computing power would one need to get this working
| completely local running a half decent llm fine tuned to sound
| like santa with all tts, stt and the pipecat inbetween?
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| I started looking into this with a Pi 5. It seemed like it was
| not quite performant enough. But I'm not an expert with these
| things and maybe someone else could make it work. We definitely
| have the technology to pull this off in this form factor. It
| would just be really expensive (maybe $500) and might also get
| a little hot.
| 827a wrote:
| This is so cool.
| spongebobstoes wrote:
| Cool project, really impressive that you can do this on top of
| everything else you do.
| joshu wrote:
| already gone. anywhere else to get it?
|
| how hard is it to reprogram?
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(page generated 2025-10-13 23:00 UTC)