AI Advent Calendar
A clip from the TikTok showing the AI host reading clues, the LED grid lighting up categories, and the game in action.
Overview
What started as a Christmas gift idea turned into a full-blown engineering project — a talking AI-powered advent calendar that plays Jeopardy. Built as a surprise for my girlfriend, the calendar is a massive LED grid controlled by an Arduino, with an AI host that reads clues, judges answers, and keeps score using text-to-speech.
How It Works
- Arduino controls a grid of addressable LED strips, programmed to function as a giant pixel display
- Each day of advent reveals a new Jeopardy category on the LED grid
- Claude API and OpenAI API generate dynamic Jeopardy clues and categories
- AI text-to-speech serves as the game show host — reading clues, accepting answers, providing commentary
- The whole system runs as an interactive game with real-time scoring
The Build
The hardware side involved running LED strips through a custom frame, wiring them into a grid pattern, and programming the Arduino to address each strip as a row in a larger display. The software side tied together the Claude and OpenAI APIs for content generation and TTS, with the Arduino handling the visual output.
Build Gallery
