[sen]

It's really cool how people are taking these tiny cheap MCUs and making them do fun things for hobbyists. There's nothing better than a project with zero real-world use-case but that's done just because it was a challenge.

Eg:

Making the CH32V003 programmable via USB: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-QazXghkLY

CH32V003 "Super-Cluster": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh93FayWHqw

Powering a Nixie Tube from USB with a CH32V003: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4d3PgEXhdY

(A good rule in life in general is to just always watch CNLohr and Bitluni if you're into "useless but amazing hardware projects")

[daneel_w]

The software portion of this has a common real-world use case: keyword spotting (voice command) in interactive phone calls.

[eternityforest]

The general concept has a real world use, but this specific implementation probably doesn't perform as well as most of the already available ones on more powerful hardware.

Maybe it could have an IRL use for efficient wake word spotting or the like though.

[fennecfoxy]

The point of a wake word is that it's using low power hardware, so everything can sleep, that's why it's a wake word.

Though tbf much more powerful arm processors are indeed still very low power.