There’s been a lot made of ChatGPT lately, and I haven’t really kept up with the details but have seen the sensationalist/click-bait headlines. I decided to check it out and see what it is about.

I decided to give it the following prompt, one that I knew the answer to but was complicated enough that this chat AI could perhaps show it’s benefit: “Write a shell script for a raspberry pi that reports the CPU temperature.” The reply was decent, even going so far as to instruct me how to change the execution mode of the file and then how to run it.

I then asked it “Make the output in fahrenheit instead of celsius.” ChatGPT enthusiastically updated the script, and explained how it uses the formula to convert celsius to fahrenheit. Neat.

Then I decided to throw it a harder problem. “I want the output of this script to be sent to my Home Assistant instance.” ChatGPT replied that you can use the REST API of Home Assistant to send the output to, and updated the script to send the temperature in JSON format to Home Assistant.

None of these prompts were difficult, per se. What was impressive to me was that I could conversationally get the answers I was looking for within 5 minutes from a single source, rather than scouring various search results.

After copying this script to my three Raspberry Pi’s, and running them, I had the sensors displaying to my HA dashboard.

ChatGPT and similar tools are coming for Google. Being able to conversationally get the answers I need, and refining them, is a much better experience then wading through terrible search results. It’s been fun dipping my toe into ChatGPT, I’ve also setup an internet connection speed monitor that is reporting to HA.