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

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

#271

Post by MrGilbert »

I built my own lay man's digital signage solution.

I wanted to have a display in my living room, which shows the temperature of all rooms in my apartment. So I used an Android Picture Frame. This is connected via WIFI, and offers FTP access.

A Docker service on my local in-house server grabs a random background image from a folder. Depending if we have day or night time, the picture will show satellite images from earth’s day or night view.

It then connects to my home assistant instance, and pulls all the necessary values. A SVG template is then filled with these values, and they are merged with the background image. The service then uploads the image to the picture frame, and it will refresh the image after some minutes.

The whole thing uses templates and config files, so it's easy to extend.

Unfortunately, the picture frame broke down since, and I haven’t had the chance to buy another one yet.

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

#272

Post by mourner »

Not too fancy, but I built a math model & interactive visualization of my parking spot to understand how to efficiently park there without bumping into anything: https://observablehq.com/@mourner/kinematics-of-reverse-angl...

Discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21891919

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

#273

Post by robertlagrant »

cobbzilla wrote: post #110

My mom digitized many many old family videos, and wanted them online for sharing with family (including elderly & not-super-tech-savvy relatives). She asked me “should I just upload them all to a YouTube channel?” Thankfully it was a phone call so my mom didn’t see my aghast expression. I prefer that big tech not index this stuff! Better to keep “in the family” Seriously why does big tech deserve this free & super-pr…

> Seriously why does big tech deserve this free & super-private window into me & my ancestors lives?

I don't think anyone's claiming it deserves anything?

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

#274

Post by dmingod666 »

I made - A screenshot to text copied to clipboard - Another variant had translation from one of the local languages that I can't read to english - Built a keyboard identifier for windows that could know which USB keyboard the keypress came from and then suppress keystroke and then launch the program (differentiating keyboards is unnecessarily hard btw) - A python app that could pin any app 'on top' or change it's opacity %

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

#275

Post by ghbarton »

My dad wanted a analysis tool for Flight Sim, ended up having to build one himself that tracks flights then generates loads of reports and maps for you. The map shows you landmarks you flew over with short descriptions, a 3D model of the flight, various charts describing things like glidescope, GForces, speed, pitch/yaw and a bunch of other stuff like runway alignment. He spent so much time that he decided to make a product out of it that's doing quite well: https://myfs.flights

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

#276

Post by withinboredom »

A deadman's switch connected to a manner of things. It basically works by 'non-existence' instead of existence and fires a webhook once something stops. For example, if my computer is turned off for a couple of weeks, it will send an email to loved ones. When I go day hiking, something similar happens when my phone loses service/power for more than a couple hours and sends a low-quality gps track. Basically it's if-this-then-that but more like if-this-stops-then-that. I have it tracking all kinds of things, like git-commits-per-person, server/device health metrics, and things like that.

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

#277

Post by Dowwie »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #134

I built myself an automated hydroponic grow tent. It measures and corrects pH, electrical conductivity, oxidation reduction potential, temperature of the air and water, water level, and humidity. It also automates pumps, lights, and fans (I know people normally advise against this). None of it is particularly sophisticated, but I’m really proud of it. I initially used a deep water culture and later moved on to the nu…

Have you checked out flux.ai for PCB design?

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

#278

Post by sirwitti »

jo-m wrote: post #254

I have a rail line right under my apartment, so I built a small computer vision app running on a Rasperry Pi which records each train passing, and tries to stitch an image of it. It has a frontend at https://trains.jo-m.ch/ . Edit: it's currently raining and the rain drops are disturbing the images a bit.

This is really cool! Thanks for creating and sharing!

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

#280

Post by ra »

glapworth wrote: post #154

We recently remodelled our kitchen and dining area, and I wanted some art piece on the wall but couldn’t decide what. For months the wall was a little bare and we were having a lot of dinner guests. I realised our WiFi password was too complicated to keep reading out to family and friends so I built a QR code in Lego that automatically connects you to our guest WiFi. It looks good, and it’s Lego so it was a fun proje…

Today I learned you can generate a QR that connects to WiFi.
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