Record and ask
Everything's connected. Here's how to use the button day to day, what happens to a recording after you stop, and how to get answers back out.
One button, three gestures
Start or stop recording
Click once to start a new session, and again to end it. The recording LED shows when you're live.
Power on
Switches on the PowerBoost's 5V so the Pi boots. Give it a moment to start its services.
Shut down
Ends any recording, shuts the Pi down cleanly, and cuts power 15 seconds later.
What happens after you stop
Each session is a folder named for the time it started. Marker files show where it is in the pipeline, so you can always tell what's done.
Ask your recordings
Ask in plain English from the repo folder. Your question is matched against the six closest transcript chunks, and llama3.1:8b answers from those excerpts only.
source env/bin/activate python mac/ask.py "[YOUR QUESTION]"
Troubleshooting
A session never reaches the Mac
Watch the Pi's logs. Failed uploads retry on the next pass, so SSH or Tailscale problems show up here.
journalctl -u recorder -u uploader -f
Reprocess a session
Delete its markers and the processor picks it up again. Sessions from before speaker labeling need both removed.
rm recordings/*/TRANSCRIBED recordings/*/INDEXED
Speaker 1 isn't always the same person
Speakers are numbered by who talks first in each session, so labels don't carry over between recordings.
Odd timestamps or a full SD card
The Pi has no real-time clock, so early sessions can be misnamed. Uploaded sessions also stay on the Pi, so clear them out now and then.