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Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life

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Re: Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life

#131

Post by stranded22 »

OJFord wrote: post #128
stranded22 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have 300+ tasks / notes, I’d look at separating the notes out… I expect there are better note oriented apps. I used to use todoist but now use TickTick- similar but with some extra features. The non-premium is awful though, you have to sign up for a proper workable product (it is cheaper than todoist)

What's awful with non-premium TickTick? I've been considering paying just to support it, not aware of a feature or limitation driving me to.

Give it a shot - you’ll see the difference. It is a completely different experience

Re: Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life

#132

Post by eddieroger »

sbalamurugan wrote: post #71

I went all in on apple ecosystem this year after literally 13 years of using android. Wife and I got iPhone 14 Pro, Apple Watch 8 and AirPods Pro. Got HomePod mini and Apple TV for home. We got bunch of home kit compatible tech at home (baby monitor, smart plugs, bulbs etc). We also subscribe to apple one family. The results are fantastic. Everything works with everything else, which is impossible to explain without…

I spent the last ten years pushing my family this way (my nuclear family, then as I got married, my wife joined the fold), and it pays off so well. My initial push was support - I can better support iPhones or Macs because that's what I had and they're all the same. No remembering what GPU is installed for which Control Panel option when HDMI isn't working, or being able to navigate to the exact weird section in Settings->General on iPhone by looking at mine. Since then, iCloud sharing has made sending notes and other enabled content so easy. They just don't advertise that stuff, and I don't know why.

Re: Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life

#133

Post by zeagle »

Moldoteck wrote: post #79
zeagle wrote: post #41

We also do the email thing but as an alias to sends it to both our inboxes. That is a great 'life hack' for flights, car rentals, reservations, important purchases, etc. I purchased foldersync for android to copy nightly photos off the phones to our nas to \name\yyyymm\ to backup our photos without relying on 3rd party sync. Solves the issue of losing videos/photos if a phone breaks. http://photos/ can browse them wi…

Why not syncthing for photo copy?

I went with foldersync as it just copies to a nas SMB share so no software on the receiving end to maintain and I already have seafile for other reasons. It is also more than just a sync as rules are to exclude fairly small file size, copy at night if on home wifi, a one way copy of new files to \name\yyyymm to sort the photos on the destination end. I am not sure if syncthing can do that.

Re: Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life

#135

Post by LilBytes »

theshrike79 wrote: post #115
yasuocidal wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a server, a small project of mine, and i installed nextcloud. Now my whole family and close friends use it to backup our photos. The official app for it is exceptional for syncing (you can set it to ONLY do the sync when charging or other parameters). There are other benefits of nextcloud (contact backup/Calendar/Messaging etc) and you can set it up on a raspberrypi with an external hard drive, throw it near y…

I could never bear the stress of being in charge of someone else's photo backups. Especially when the option is just for them to pay $10 or something to a huge company that'll have pretty much 100% uptime and zero chance of lost files.

Its really not that hard. Just don't fuck around with backups, throw them all into Backblaze B2, S3 or what ever else.

I have the same setup as the person you're commenting to, initial setup was easy. Just test out your backup strategy thoroughly.

Re: Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life

#136

Post by BrandoElFollito »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #95

My own family dashboard. I did not purchase it but wrote myself and it was a life changer. It is an always-on screen (during the day) where everything family oriented happens: all our calendars merged for today and tomorrow (and important events within 6 days), weather, when kids are back from school, info when I am on my way back from work, various alerts on stuff breaking at home, etc. When I finally installed it,…

OK, taken the unexpected comments :) I will do a longer write-up here and point to this block to join the comments together.

The aim of this dashboard is to be always-on with the following information displayed (a link to an image of the dashboard, there is not much available at this moment: https://imgur.com/a/pHSIBcO)

- current time and date

- current temperature as seen by Netatmo in my neighborhood

- estimations for rain in the next 60 minutes - from Météo France

- weather forecast for today and tomorrow

- all family calendar merged for today and tomorrow + specific events within 6 days

- alerts when there is a water leak, or when something is broken, or when flowers need water

- when are kids coming from school today and tomorrow

- information when I am driving or biking from the office with estimated arrival time

This is powered by a keyboard- and mouse-less old Raspberry Pi and displayed on an old screen mounted on a wall (one day it will be neatly mounted IN the wall. One day.). It is displayed with

I am not a developer but wanted to do the software part anyway myself. There were several changes over the last 7 or 8 years. Initially I wrote a backend that would query the information from the various sources but I ended up with a purely client-based SPA that connects to Home Assistant, which in turn retrieves all the information and keps state.

The frontend was the opportunity to learn JS/TS/Vue and I rewrote it three times to learn Quasar and recently to move to a pure Vue3/Vite/TailwindCSS frontend. It was a fun trip. It helped me enormously to also learn how to interact with APIs in less-ideal conditions.

I also tried to directly use the dashboarding capabilities provided by Home Assistant but I did not really like everything. I may revise this one day if I get a touch screen (a touch monitor) because then it makes sense to use the widgets HA has natively.

Coming up next: the ability to have several screens switched by a button

Re: Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life

#137

Post by BrandoElFollito »

theshrike79 wrote: post #113
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #95

My own family dashboard. I did not purchase it but wrote myself and it was a life changer. It is an always-on screen (during the day) where everything family oriented happens: all our calendars merged for today and tomorrow (and important events within 6 days), weather, when kids are back from school, info when I am on my way back from work, various alerts on stuff breaking at home, etc. When I finally installed it,…

We're going to need some details :) I tried doing this with an Android tablet, but the screen is just way too small. Now there are really nicely sized (15.6") USB-C -powered displays for around $100 that could be paired with pretty much any Raspberry Pi to do the same. Or I could just shove an old 24-27" inch display on the wall with a VESA mount...

Thanks for your comment! I summarized the various points in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37764585

Re: Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life

#138

Post by BrandoElFollito »

codingdave wrote: post #127
theshrike79 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because then you're just limited into showing a single calendar. Some stuff you want in agenda-format (next 5 events on the calendar), others you want in a monthly view, others in daily or weekly. And then you have alerts, weather etc that doesn't really fit the calendar format that well.

You are over-engineering this concept. A simple shared calendar absolutely would work. If you want more features, go for it, but that doesn't mean a shared calendar is a non-functional solution.

I really wanted more information on that dashboard (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37764585)

Re: Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life

#139

Post by BrandoElFollito »

morjom wrote: post #105
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #95

My own family dashboard. I did not purchase it but wrote myself and it was a life changer. It is an always-on screen (during the day) where everything family oriented happens: all our calendars merged for today and tomorrow (and important events within 6 days), weather, when kids are back from school, info when I am on my way back from work, various alerts on stuff breaking at home, etc. When I finally installed it,…

Care to detail it a bit more? How much did you use frameworks if at all etc (you did say you wrote it yourself so probably no framework, or?)

Thanks for your comment! I summarized the various points in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37764585

Re: Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life

#140

Post by BrandoElFollito »

dugmartin wrote: post #112
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #95

My own family dashboard. I did not purchase it but wrote myself and it was a life changer. It is an always-on screen (during the day) where everything family oriented happens: all our calendars merged for today and tomorrow (and important events within 6 days), weather, when kids are back from school, info when I am on my way back from work, various alerts on stuff breaking at home, etc. When I finally installed it,…

I’m planning on using MagicMirror ( https://magicmirror.builders/ ) to do this in my kitchen but without the mirror part (just a TV mounted in a niche on the wall). Did you build your software from scratch?

I considered this too but finally realized I may want to have the information in several places, not all behind a mirror. But th eidea i neat.

I summarized the points in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37764585

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