A bench supply that answers to a voice

Twenty-four seconds at the bench. On the left, an iPad running an app that carries the lab mark and the line under it, "Coherence made visible." Behind it, a SKY TOPPOWER bench supply with its output off, and a Fluke 177 clipped across the terminals reading a few millivolts.

The app takes a spoken question. The one on screen is "How many amps?" The readout panel shows the supply online at 29 degrees and in standby, with the setpoints laid out beside it. The meter is there for the reason a meter is always there: the app can say whatever it likes, and the Fluke says what is on the wire.

What answers is Siri. The iOS 27 beta ships MCP in the assistant, so I wrote a server for the supply and pointed Siri at it. A desktop app drives the same instrument by hand, every setpoint on a GUI, and the two share one control path. Asking out loud is the demo. The reason to build it is what comes after: once a supply takes instructions from a program, a test that used to need somebody standing at the bench runs on its own.

That is the whole point of putting a voice in front of a power supply. It is a cheap thing to demo and an expensive thing to get wrong. Twelve years of switchgear says you do not trust a display you cannot check, so the check is in the frame.