Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

#11

Post by scrollaway » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 3:57 PM UTC

I wrote a hearthstone simulator when the game came out.

It was used and referenced by a few scientific papers and phds since. It’s my little pride, even though it would really need a rewrite at this point to work properly with all the additions in the game.

It contains its own little python driven dsl for actions. I could talk about it for hours. All that work led to me starting a company around hearthstone (I have since left it behind but it eventually grew into other games).

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

#12

Post by thedanbob » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 4:02 PM UTC

I wrote my own firmware for ESP-8266 IoT devices to connect them to Home Assistant. There are many like it, but this one is mine: https://github.com/thedanbob/mqtt_light https://github.com/thedanbob/mqtt_garage_door https://github.com/thedanbob/mqtt_power_cycle

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

#13

Post by cdnsteve » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 4:03 PM UTC

Malware scanner for anything uploaded to web servers. Was pretty cool at the time learning and identifying things in the wild then creating custom rulesets.

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

#14

Post by koliber » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 4:05 PM UTC

A shortcut on my iPhone, that I can dictate a note to, and it transcribes it and puts it into my GTD inbox in Notion. It helps me not forget things. Lowers the friction and allows me to make note of fleeting ideas, thoughts, and things to get done.

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

#15

Post by millzlane » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 4:10 PM UTC

Not very interesting, but used VB script to make Netflix sleep timer for the active tab. (looks for the browser process, makes the windows active,sends a ctrl+W to the window to close the video player, and finally sleeps the display.

This way I can fall asleep to noise that doesn't later wake me up.

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

#16

Post by jakear » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 4:10 PM UTC

A website to see a map of the world's tides, and bidirectional predictions for individual stations (edit: worldwide too, forgot I added that). The UI/UX is... archaic, but that's just how I wanted it. It works fully offline. https://solunar.pages.dev

Most fun part was transcribing 70+ year old NOAA tide calculation mathematic/astronomic/hydrologic research papers into modern TypeScript. Approach is semi-documented here: https://github.com/JacksonKearl/solunar

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

#17

Post by modzu » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 4:11 PM UTC

time machine

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

#18

Post by zwieback » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 4:13 PM UTC

Chicken coop auto-door opener so I don't have to get up at 4AM in the summer. It was just a basic Arduino system but I learned that large canning jars make excellent enclosures: waterproof, reusable, easily modified and replacable lid.

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

#19

Post by RedGreenBlack » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 4:15 PM UTC

A webbapp that helps me remember names by showing them in a graph network. Super simple, use it constantly

A webapp for sharing files/text between two devices no matter the platform. Use this all the time. No more sending emails, Facebook message, dropbox link to yourself.

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

#20

Post by seurimas » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 4:17 PM UTC

MUDs are a great breeding ground for bespoke programs. I've made my own system of triggers and aliases in Rust, which interfaces with Mudlet (very popular MUD client) through JSON over stdio. Being written in Rust, it has enabled a publicly usable web tool (http://seurimas.github.io/topper/explainer/?/topper/explaine...), but the majority of the code is just for me.