watt innovation center, 2026
ipxassistant
what it is
as an it intern at clemson's watt family innovation center, i built an assistant that lets you ask about the building's av network in plain english, like which encoders in a room have no signal.
- scrape
- ask
- look up
- answer
my favorite part
it can look, but it can't touch. the assistant only sends read commands and queries a read-only database, so it can't directly change routing or settings. people still decide what to do with its answers.
what i built
- the scraper: a background job that pulls 300+ devices and 3,000+ streams across 50 rooms into sqlite, and records what changed between scrapes.
- the agent: read-only tools for room overviews, device details and sql lookups, so the model answers from real data.
- model choices: it runs on claude, gemini or a free local model. on gemini’s free tier, it moves to the next model when one runs out of daily quota.
- the panel: a flask web panel styled after the building’s touch panel.
also at watt: a java scheduling system that automates about 80% of recurring lighting operations.
what it looks like
IPXdemoIPX Assistantfloor 1floor 2floor 310:24 am
room a6 devices · 2 no signalroom b4 deviceslab 18 devicesstudio5 deviceslobby3 devices
room a devices
encoder-ano signal
encoder-b1080p60
encoder-c4k30
encoder-dno signal
assistant
which encoders in room a have no signal?
2 of 6: encoder-a and encoder-d.
room_overview(“room a”)status
devices26
no signal2
last scrape1 min ago
where it stands
- status
- a working prototype. the goal is to deploy it so staff can use it day to day.
- works well
- single lookups, even on the small local model.
- known limits
- the local model often gets joins and multi-device summaries wrong, so stronger models are better when the answer matters.
- not measured yet
- i haven’t formally tested its accuracy.