LeAffirmation | Devpost

The final hardware setup of LeAffirmation!

We built LeAffirmation, a personal hype man powered by the voice and spirit of LeBron James. Our device listens to your speech, detects your mood, and plays one of eight custom voice lines tailored to your emotional state — whether you're feeling down, neutral, confident, or just ready for some memes. It’s all built with Python on a Raspberry Pi, using Vosk for speech-to-text and VADER for sentiment analysis.

We were inspired by our shared love of basketball, meme culture, and the energy that LeBron brings to every moment — on and off the court. We wanted to build something that wasn’t just technically interesting, but also fun and uplifting. It became a way for us to laugh, learn, and explore what embedded systems can do with a human twist.

One of our biggest challenges came late in the build process when the speaker simply wouldn't work. After hours of debugging, we discovered the issue came down to a simple wiring mistake — a swapped RX/TX connection. That moment taught us the importance of triple-checking hardware connections (and not overthinking the problem too much).

Throughout the hackathon, we learned a lot — from soldering and working with UART communication to handling audio files and setting up the Raspberry Pi for real-time voice processing. For two of us, this was our very first hackathon; for the third, it was their second. No matter our level of experience, we all came away with new skills, stronger teamwork, and a project we’re proud of (and still laughing about).