Eclectus Bot - Custom Chatbot Tutorial (Telegram, GroupMe)

Update: As of November 2022, Heroku no longer has a free tier.
See https://blog.heroku.com/next-chapter#focus-on-mission-critical

Eclectus Bot runs on Telegram and GroupMe!
Ironically, Eclectus isn't too confident in my abilities...

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This month I've gotten back into programming again and decided to refactor and improve the chatbot I wrote during winter break. Since my friends and I switched from using GroupMe to Telegram, it was a good motivator to get the bot working on another platform, and think about making it cross-platform on other messaging services as well.

Since I spend quite a lot of my time working on it, I decided to also make it this month's video project. Having a visual tutorial/documentation instead of typing out some instructions is much easier to understand, so hopefully it helps anyone who wants to set up their own bot.

I've made a tutorial-like video before (see "BT Companion App - Prototype Walkthrough" https://youtu.be/0AnoiFKcI44), but this time around, I've got a better grasp of how Resolve works, so I think this tutorial isn't too bad. Though one thing that I've learned is that making tutorials is kinda tough because you have to plan ahead how you want to explain things and when/what to show on screen, but it doesn't always make sense to write a full script. Over in the editing room, I found quite a few mistakes in the VO when I misspoke or forgot to say something but was able to correct it by adding text on screen.

I've obviously refreshed or deleted the API keys shown in the tutorial.

Links
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Eclectus Bot GitHub: https://github.com/lgsoohoo/eclectusbot
Git Bash (Windows): https://git-scm.com/download/win
Heroku CLI: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-cli
Heroku: https://dashboard.heroku.com/apps
JSON Validator: https://jsonlint.com/
Apnorton's GroupMe Bot Tutorial: http://www.apnorton.com/blog/2017/02/28/How-I-wrote-a-Groupme-Chatbot-in-24-hours/
BloomBot GitHub Page: https://github.com/apnorton/bloombot

Heroku Commands
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heroku login
heroku apps:create {your project name}
heroku logs


Setting Up Config Vars Videos
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Setting up Config Vars for Telegram: https://youtu.be/N33ggcuEyI0
Setting up Config Vars for GroupMe: https://youtu.be/H5HyYMIg-bs


Recording Software: OBS Studio 25.0.8
Editing Software: DaVinci Resolve 16.2.4

-- Friday, July 31st, 2020