I'm actually writing this on my day off. I took a bunch of vacation around the holidays because I could, and because I don't take enough the rest of the year. Anyway, I'm just going to share how I've been spending my time (not counting time with the family, which I am certainly doing).

I was looking at my radio gear sitting on my desk when I spotted a Raspberry Pi 5. I won it in a drawing last year at pgConf.EU. I promised I'd do something with it in PostgreSQL when I won it, and I've let it sit for a year. So I decided to cross the streams a bit. I went to CoPilot, the AI, and gave it a list of radio equipment and gear I had sitting around the house and asked it to suggest some projects I could work on to put the Pi to work AND to build out a PostgreSQL database in Azure along the way (keep in mind, this is my time off work). It suggested a bunch of projects, some of which I'll come back to I think. But the one I picked was to build PiAware, a part of FlightAware, into the Pi. Further, I figured I'd vibe code the whole thing.

And that's what I did. Go here to see it in action.

I worked with CoPilot to get PiAware installed and running. That took no time at all and CoPilot was helpful through out. Then, I added a database to a cluster I already have running in Azure for the series of articles I'm doing on dbRosetta (link to the latest one). I then asked CoPilot to help me build a web app to show off the data I was collecting. Hoo boy, all hell breaks loose. See, the AI, CoPilot, is smart. It has reems and reems of knowledge. However, it truly does not think. And it loses context, frequently. It started me down multiple bad paths, but I kept at it. First day, I had a functional web page. Second day, I added a report and cleaned up the behavior. Third day I worked on securing the whole thing (OMG is AI horrible at security unless you explicitly tell it, constantly, to be secure). It's still not quite where I want it, and I'll probably do some more to it. It's incredible how much I got done and how quickly, but also, just how painful it can be working with the AI unless you're very clear, careful, and studious with your prompts. I'm already planning on submitting this (along with dbRosetta) to events in the coming year (sorry to all the events that accepted me, or rejected me, before I put this all together). My biggest learning from this is, the AI really can do everything for you except reason. You are going to have to think through the issues when you hit them (and you will) and do troubleshooting on your own frequently, then feed the results into the AI. Humans are still necessary.

Anyway, that's how I've been spending my "holiday," building an application and a database. How have you spent yours?

For those interested, it's a Pi 5 running latest Pi OS. PiAware linked above. I have a tiny little antenna attached to my roof. That's all connected to an RTL-SDR (Realtek Software Defined Radio, mine is the v2). It's PostgreSQL 17 on an Azure Flexible Server. I'm serving it through an Azure Static Web App running Python. I have a private endpoint enabled and a VPN connecting the Pi to Azure. Currently the code is in a private repo on GitHub, but I'll eventually share it.