Ah ok. Yes for the water company each meter has a Raspberry pi pico that reads the switch closure on the meter and counts gallons. It wakes up periodically and communicates with another pico that is on s meshtastic lora network. We are installing the devices and setting up the network.
Wait, you budgeted for an in-house hardware solution but wouldn't have bothered writing the data collection software without an LLM? Does this water co. serve more than, like, 25 homes?
Less. Maybe 5-10. But yes. This is me and another person doing the development and we want it to be a cheap as possible. I used the LLM to get the two devices talking to each other and to get the power management sorted. I don't have the coding chops to write the code from scratch. But i can debug
So you didn't actually need the LLM you just didn't personally know how to code it? Every time I want to code something and I don't know how I learn something which I can take into other projects. Because you used LLMs to do it for you you're no better off than you were before in terms of knowledge.
The LLM is often wrong or writes buggy code. But stepping through it with a debugger gives me a good sense of what it is supposed to do. It still takes time and effort. However I still think it is a "hit the ground running" kind of start rather than self bootstrap. It's an assistant.
Could I do it without it? Yes, it would just take me a lot longer. Is it worth it? I think that question will be answered ultimately by whether the externalities are built into the price. Right now they are not.
It's worth remembering that not even the immediate costs are built into the price at present. LLM companies are burning through billions of their investors' dollars to sell you access at rates far below cost
I'm using the LLM to write V1 of the code which i then debug. It's in C which i know. What i don't know is the sdk for this system (raspberry pi pico). Having to make it run is how i learn. Your still have to learn it you can just learn by doing. That's the value for me.
What LLMs are automating here is teaching and community. In the past you would have had to ask someone or crowd source a solution in a forum. That's where the information came from it's just obfuscating the human connection. I beg you to read The Machine Stops. It's only short.
Still have to do that. But yes I'm aware. I think the gaps in the training corpus are where the human interaction occurs. And the HW/SW are i play in are all item source anyway. So yes humans are the source and the ultimate go to.
*open source