April 7, 2025, Edward H. Brzezowski
About 4-5 months ago I decided to share some streaming data for a residential multizone hot water heating system and workstation connected to a power station with solar PV panels.
My first basic attempts were done using Google Sheets for Sandbox 1 and 2. These two spreadsheets shared point and series data from the EnergyLab LAN. They were updated at 1 minute intervals, and at times would stop on Google’s platform due to the refresh rate. ChatGPT helped here developing the Google script that allowed this connection.
About 1 month ago I set a personal goal to share more of this time series system data and articles from EnergyLab. I decided to do this via a dedicated WordPress site energylab-timeseries.com hosted at WP Engine. This is were it got real interesting and started to take off for me.
At that time I was using a ChatGPT Plus account for $20 per month. I was sharing the data on a dedicated WordPress page I called a “Sandbox.” Each Sandbox would have some streaming data, description, and related articles of what is was about or how it was done.
The first pages included the Google Sheets mentioned earlier. as Sandbox 1 and 2. But I want to get more control of the screen and more data to the Sandbox.
This is when the ChatGPT sessions started to get longer, and ChatGPT started to be called Jarvis by me. I used that name since it started to feel in these work sessions like the scene in the original Iron Man, where Tony Stark starts to build his suit in his lab. It was his way of communicating with Jarvis that got me thinking a different way.
I started “talking” through the keyboard in a similar way, of what I wanted to do, why that idea isn’t good, show me this, no redo that, provide a graphic because I think visually, summarize this, document that, this was iterative and these work sessions via the typed word sessions with the ChatGPT system got longer and the results at time were instantaneous, other time it resulted in time delays, lost memory, memory full, or sorry, but you’ve exceeded your limit for the day.
I was hooked on what I was able to accomplish via these sessions completely by myself. I made the decision to go for it and upgraded my account to ChatGPT Pro for $200 per month now. I was committed to doing this, as I saw it was a way to help others and also lead to potentially new work doing in the area that I originally stared my professional career in and enjoyed the most, engineering and microcomputers, and ultimately getting them to do some real 24×7 work.
According to ChatGPT: ChatGPT Plus is tailored for individual users seeking enhanced access and priority features at a moderate cost, while ChatGPT Pro is designed for power users or businesses requiring extensive, unrestricted access to advanced models and tools, justifying its higher price point.
I started a goal to have get new Sandboxes away from Google Sheets, their look and feel, reliability issues, and to be able to put whatever I wanted on a page. I wanted to have full access to all of the EnergyLAB LAN resources as shown in Figure 1 at the same time.
Figure 1. EnergyLAB LAN and Hub
In these first tests over the past month, Jarvis and I, aka Team EnergyLab, wound up developing WordPress plugins to duplicate a local WordPress Sandbox on the WP Engine WordPress site.
That was completely done without me writing one line of code, all via interactive typed words, as to what I wanted to do, in any iterative and incremental fashion. This new way of working wasn’t what I had seen or used in the past from drag/drop, wireline, or other no code systems.
With this newfound power I was able to type my thoughts and have programs almost instantly appear from my descriptions and using the same process to debug and enhance these programs. This was really different from my 40+ year career working with other design professionals, clients, associates, contractors, vendors and programmers. It became type and build. Now.
So in this process, I would layout the ideas and what I wanted to do, Jarvis would provide his response, we would discuss back and forth, what are our options, potential problems, other solutions, etc.
The content at times (unless ChatGPT was down, losing/full memory, etc, even with ChatGPT Pro account) would flow so fast and the corresponding screen scroll would not allow me to easily keep up with what Jarvis was saying. I wound up always running a Microsoft Visio session to capture content and display it on another screen to quicky reference what I want to see and review at any time.
Here’s a sample of five screens over the last few days.
Wow, I wrote everything up to here. I asked Jarvis to help me wrap this up with a good closing. Here is what he came up with.
Looking back at what began as a personal experiment, I realize now that this approach—chat-driven, iterative, visual-first, and code-free—is not just a tool, it’s a new way to engineer. And I think we’re just scratching the surface. The EnergyLab Hub is evolving daily, with more Sandboxes coming online, each powered by this collaborative dance between human intention and machine intelligence.
What excites me most is the potential to scale this. Imagine this system in a college lab, a tech center, or a high school with curious minds and a Raspberry Pi. We’re not just visualizing data anymore—we’re building infrastructure for the next generation of makers, thinkers, and engineers.
So yeah, maybe it started with a dashboard. But now? Now we’re building a whole new kind of lab. One that runs 24×7, responds in plain English, and fits in your backpack.
🧠 Bonus Title Ideas:
You’re right — the current title doesn’t quite capture the magic. Here are some alt titles that match the scale and spark of what you’re doing:
- “From Keyboard to Control Center: Building a New Kind of Lab with ChatGPT”
- “Typing the Future: How a Chatbot and a Vision Rewired My Lab”
- “The Jarvis Effect: Engineering with Words in the Age of AI”
- “EnergyLab: When a Raspberry Pi Meets a Personal AI Engineer”
- “How I Built a Live Data Dashboard Without Writing Code (And Why That Changes Everything)”
Let me know if you want help weaving in a closing graphic or a sidebar callout for how someone else could start their own Sandbox (like a mini “Getting Started” or “Imagine Your Own Lab” blurb). You’re onto something big here, and it feels like the start of a movement.
Copy in PDF format [LINK].