Scepter

Nicolaj Reck — hardware, ML, and product work

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Magical Scepter
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Text Entrance
LED Ring
Diffraction Rays
Gem Material
Environment
Gold
Magical Scepter

Overview

A handheld “magic scepter” built on an Arduino Nano ESP32 that turns motion gestures into spells—synchronized WS2812 LED-ring effects, embedded SFX, and ElevenLabs text-to-speech—while hosting a WiFi web UI for configuration, spell management, and real-time monitoring.

Hardware Stack

A compact ESP32‑S3 build tuned for stable, real-time motion sensing and synchronized audio/visual feedback.

  • Arduino Nano ESP32
  • MPU‑6050 IMU
  • WS2812 12‑LED ring
  • MAX98357A I2S amp
  • INMP441 I2S microphone

Gesture Spellcasting

Gestures are recorded from the web UI, downsampled + normalized into fixed-length templates, and stored in flash. Runtime recognition uses Dynamic Time Warping (DTW), confidence thresholds, cooldowns, and optional combo sequences—then triggers LED overrides plus SFX → TTS audio. Spells can also fire “real world” actions: DIY effects, lights, and other home automations.

WiFi Web Control

The scepter runs a built-in HTTP server over WiFi and advertises itself via mDNS as scepter.local. The interface covers spell CRUD + testing, volume/voice tuning, voice assistant configuration (OpenAI API), LED parameters, IMU calibration, WiFi management, and live status + orientation visualization.

Software Architecture

On boot the ESP32 brings up WiFi + the HTTP server, loads stored spells/settings from flash, then runs three loops in parallel: IMU sampling + DTW matching, FastLED ring animation, and an I2S audio pipeline that sequences SFX → ElevenLabs TTS. Voice input can be routed to a configurable OpenAI-backed assistant without blocking gesture recognition.

Runtime
Parallel
Motion
Lights
Audio
TriggersGesture
StorageFlash
Vocalay

Overview

A complete pipeline for producing and selling AI-generated vocal sample packs. A 3B parameter music model was fine-tuned on curated tracks, paired with a generation and post-production workflow to produce vocals at scale. Each pack contains a full vocal track with separated stems, BPM/key metadata, and word-level lyric timestamps.

Vocalay music generation interface

Model Training

Reverse-engineered the inference pipeline and built a full training stack from scratch. Frozen embeddings, gradient checkpointing, 8-bit AdamW, and decoder loss skipping brought VRAM from 40GB+ down to 22GB — trainable on a single RTX 3090 in ~20 hours for 30k steps.

Data Encoding
MP3 → Tokens
Tags
Stems
Lyrics
RVQ
Fine-tune
3B params
VRAM
22 GB
Steps
30k
GPU
3090

Generation Server

Python API serving the fine-tuned model with supporting post-production tasks: lyrics via LLM tool calling, stem separation (Demucs), BPM/key detection, word-level timestamps (Whisper), and cover art (SD 1.5). Includes a creative seeds system for varied output and reference audio conditioning via MuQ embeddings.

Generation
3B model
LyricsVocalStems
Post-production
DemucsWhisperBPMCover

Store

Next.js web app with streaming lyrics generation, reference audio library, batch mode, draft management with inline playback, on-demand stem separation, and a release workflow with auto-generated cover art. Stripe for payments, Neon PostgreSQL for data, Vercel Blob for released audio.

Drafts
Release
Checkout
Stripe
Danish Text-to-speech

Overview

A Danish text-to-speech adapter built on top of sesame/csm-1b. The work here is making Danish sound right: cleaner pronunciation, better pacing, and fewer “weird” drops in longer sentences.

Danish TTS web UI preview

Build

Trained as a LoRA adapter on a mixed Danish dataset (public corpora + a private extension). Data is filtered/normalized and text is cleaned to keep training stable and output consistent. The setup also supports two voice presets controlled from the prompt.

CV17
CoRal
Private
Mix
LoRA

Demo

Packaged with a simple demo and curated audio samples, so it’s easy to test quickly and share results. Released under Apache-2.0 and requires access to the base model.

Input
Velkommen til demoen...
Sampling
K
P
T
Intelligent documents

Overview

The platform is built for teams drowning in documents. It takes messy inputs and turns them into structured knowledge you can query — with answers that stay tied to the original source.

Ingestion

Upload or connect sources, then store everything in a versioned, consistent format: pages, text blocks, tables, and metadata. OCR is used when needed — but the goal is reliable structure, not just raw text.

PDFs
Emails
Images
Normalized Store
Pages
Text
Tables
Metadata

Extraction

Pull out the fields that matter using repeatable templates per document type. Tables, entities, key values, and references are captured with confidence + review hooks, so you can scale without losing control.

Template
VendorReq
Invoice DateReq
TotalReq
Line ItemsReq
Extraction
VendorConf
Invoice DateConf
TotalConf
Line ItemsConf

Workflows

Event-driven pipelines for classification, routing, approvals, and exports. Add policy checks, sensitive-data handling, and integrations to downstream systems without rewriting the core.

Rema1000 chatbot+

Overview

A practical grocery assistant built around Rema1000’s full catalog. Plan meals, generate structured lists, match ingredients to real products with prices, and ask questions with full-inventory context.

Planning

Suggests meals from constraints and converts everything into a structured shopping list with quantities — optionally split per meal.

Constraints
Budget
Diet
Time
Meal plan
Shopping list

Matching

Maps ingredients to actual products with prices, handling synonyms, packaging sizes, and sensible alternatives so the basket matches intent.

Matching
SynSizeAlt
Best
Match
Alt

Inventory Q/A

Ask about anything in the catalog: comparisons, alternatives, best value picks, or how to build a basket for a recipe.

Question
CompareAlternativesBest value
Answer
Value
Alt
Compare

Images

Upload an image and get it converted into a recipe and product basket. You can open the matched products and buy them directly on the B2C platform.

Image
Recipe
Basket
Buy

Cart flow

Built to finish fast: review, swap items, then move into a basket you can actually purchase — not just a text list.

Cart flow
Review
Swap items
Checkout
Save
Basket
Total
the UI Studio

Overview

The UI Studio is my go-to system for building products fast without the UI drifting over time. It’s a full kit: foundations → components → real layouts, all designed to work together.

Foundations

Tokens and rules that keep everything consistent: type scale, spacing, radii, shadows, colors, and layout grid. This is the part that makes the rest plug-and-play.

Tokens
Type
Space
Color
Radii
Grid

Components

A component library built around real product needs: navigation, forms, tables, cards, modals, empty states, and feedback. Variants are kept tight so it stays usable.

Library
States

Sections

Not just atoms. The kit includes real page sections for marketing and product UI — so you can assemble pages like LEGO and still end up with something coherent.

Sections
Pages

Delivery

Designed for handoff and scale: clear structure, documentation where it matters, and a system that stays maintainable when more people touch it.

Handoff
Ready
Automated UI design

Overview

A Figma plugin that builds interfaces using The UI Studio design system. The goal is speed without drift: consistent layout, consistent tokens, and zero time wasted on starting from an empty frame.

Sections

Drops in full page sections and assembles them into a coherent layout. This includes real structure — not just a stack of random components.

Sections
Layout

Theme + layout rules

Applies spacing, typography, and color theme from the system so the output stays consistent. It generates UI that already follows the rules.

Theme + rules
Spacing
Type
Color

Content fill

Adjusts copy placeholders and images so you get something presentable right away — usable for demos, flows, and quick iterations.

Copy
Images

Workflow

Pick a page type, choose sections, apply a theme, and generate. From there it’s normal Figma: tweak, swap, and ship — without rebuilding the same structure every time.

Workflow
Avaaatars.com

Overview

A free avatar library made for product UI. The goal is simple: stop shipping ugly placeholders, and keep avatars consistent across the product.

Avaaatars avatar library preview

Library

A large set of avatars with a clean baseline style — meant to cover the common “we need avatars everywhere” problem without custom illustration work.

Library

Customize

Quick customization where it matters: color + shape options, so the avatars can match the UI and still feel intentional.

Avatar
Controls
Color
Shape

Export

Exports are built for UI: transparent assets you can drop straight into dashboards, prototypes, and decks.

Preview
Export
FormatPNG
AlphaOn
Size512

Design tools

Works directly where designers are: instant access in Figma, plus downloads for other popular design tools.

Design tools

Usage

Commercially free — built to be used in real products without license friction.

Usage
Commercial

Minor projects

Agents
Reusable agent templates: prompts, tools, guardrails, and eval hooks — tuned for consistent, repeatable work.
Social media automation
From photos to scheduled posts: platform-specific captions, tone, hashtags, tagging, and publishing — managed in one place.
Editor powered by AI
A writing-first editor for teams: fast drafting, inline AI actions, and brand voice — built as a real product, not a demo.
Real-time license detection
Edge setup for real-time plate detection + OCR, with lookups against public registries — built to run on lightweight hardware.
Data scrapers
Automated scraping pipelines: collect, clean, dedupe, enrich, and ship structured outputs — built for reliability over one-off scripts.
Voice Assistants
Voice-first assistants with local control: speech in, actions out, and spoken responses — built for real home workflows.
OpenData explorer
Address → map of nearby amenities using open data. Built to answer the real question fast: what’s actually around this place?
Universal remote
An ESP32 remote that learns IR signals, stores them, and runs simple macros — practical control without vendor apps.