My latest project has been rebuilding an old BMW R80/RT motorcycle from scratch. Since I don’t know much about the electrical side of it, I heavily relied on Claude to help me figure it out.
Here is me doing exactly that (notice the iPad on the left):
While AI has been very helpful in helping me learn this new skill, using Claude on an iPad in my workshop has been slow and frustrating for a number of reasons:
My hands are always dirty. The last thing I want is to touch my iPad, open an app or type in text
I can’t hold a soldering iron and use an iPad at the same time
Making Claude understand what’s in front of me took a lot of explaining & taking pictures
Insights from previous days and weeks were buried in Claude chats
Claude felt like a foreign entity to my workshop. It ultimately got me the results I wanted, but getting there was slow and tedious. There had to be a better way.
Meet Cyclops – My Workshop Droid
I saw this as a challenge to find a better solution. What I wanted was a low-friction method to get help from AI when working on projects. It needed to be:
Voice-operated so I can interact with it without having to drop everything
Sturdy so it could survive living in my workshop full-time
Self-learning so I won’t have to explain everything over and over again
Intuitively opinionated around my workflows and preferences
First, let me show you the end result before I dig into some interesting details of this build:
First-person view of holding Cyclops: 7” touchscreen with live camera preview, a tiny speaker and a physical multi-function button.
Cyclops’ rear side: Case cutout for the camera, mounting rails and the USB extension for connecting all sorts of devices
Essentially, it is a rugged handheld camera with a built-in AI assistant. Kind of like if Jarvis was a GoPro. You press the silver button on the right and it “wakes up”. Every session is automatically recorded and everything you and Cyclops talk about is logged and stored on the SD card. Here is what it looks like in action:
How it’s been helpful so far
Cyclops is a big improvement over Dobby – the last robot I built – which felt more like a proof of concept. The capabilities I built into Cyclops have turned it into a genuinely helpful assistant across all of my projects.
Digging through manuals
Looking up stuff in PDF manuals is becoming a thing of the past for me. I’ve uploaded a bunch of manuals for devices and components to Cyclops. Now, whenever I need to look up anything, I just ask:
Find the manual for […] and look up how to […]
Upload your PDF manuals to Cyclops, so it can search them for you.
Drawing Diagrams
A picture says more than a thousand words, right? Working on my bike, I often had to fit modern components onto an old electrical system. Cyclops can create custom diagrams and visuals for any situation:
Draw me a diagram for how to wire up my handlebar turn signal switch.
Finding and playing YouTube tutorials
YouTube is full of helpful videos. Whenever I hit a road block while working on something, I just ask Cyclops to find a video that helps me understand something or get unstuck.
I’m stuck. Find me a YouTube video that explains how this works!
Within seconds, it finds the right video and jumps to the section that contains what I’m looking for.
Revisiting previous conversations and pictures
Not only does Cyclops keep track of everything we’ve been working together in an easy-to-access and organized way, but it is also able to go back and resurface content from previous sessions. Need to take another look at that diagram from a few weeks ago? Just ask…
Pull up that turn signal diagram we were working on last week.
Cyclops catalogs every image and every interaction, so it can bring it back up for you when you need it.
What Cyclops is made of
Since I wanted it to be sturdy, I chose the Pelican 1040 Micro Case as a platform.
The heart and brain of the device is a good old Raspberry Pi 5. Combined with a 5” touchscreen, it’s attached to one side of the case:
Raspberry Pi on the inside, touchscreen on the outside.
For audio, I found this tiny 3W speaker + amplifier on Amazon. Speaker is attached next to the screen, with the wires routed to the inside:
Finally, a wireless lav mic for audio input, the camera module and some SmartRig rails so I can attach Cyclops to other things:
I routed the power cable and a USB extension to the outside of the case and voila:
Future Ambitions
For being a prototype, it’s already been super helpful to me across a wide range of tasks, including:
Rebuilding the electrical system on my BMW
Projects involving microcontrollers (including Cyclops itself)
Programming synthesizers, sequencers and drum machines
To take it to the next level, I’d want to give it a custom case to make it resistant to water, dirt and dropping it on the floor – the kind of thing you can throw into a tool box. Also, making it battery-powered would greatly improve usability. Here is an AI video clip of what it could look like as a product:
I’ve also created a 3D rendering of it just to demonstrate my vision in a more visual way. If you want to learn more or get involved, check out the project website or contact me directly.
