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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?

#281

Post by Jleagle »

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.

Sounds interesting id love to know how you do it. Is the speed calculated based on the noise of the wheels going over a track join? Then you can work out the length/speed based on the time it takes etc. Are the train types/images random or calculated some how?

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

#282

Post by prenoob »

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.

Taking trainspotting to a new level, congratulations

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

#284

Post by Nextgrid »

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.

Made me think of Kartrak (an early optical barcode-like system for tracking rolling stock): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K8UpMNYIPo

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

#285

Post by edelans »

Control your fan speed with your heartbeat.

I created this while setting up a home trainer for bike training in my garage during the lockdown in 2020. One issue with home trainers, unlike biking outdoors, is that you don't get the benefit of the wind generated by your speed that cools you down. So you sweat a lot, and this creates dehydration. Not cool (pun intended).

The solution is to use a fan. But when you are lazy (and focused on your workout) you don't want to have to get up and adjust fan speed (and I don't have a remote for my fan, and it's much cooler to have it automated instead).

https://github.com/edelans/Heart-Rate-Smart-Fan

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

#286

Post by prenoob »

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…

I'm assuming you have several tanks with ph+ and ph- solutions? Are you using off the shelf ph sensors? How about EC?

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

#288

Post by jdemaeyer »

I used to love discovering new music through Spotify's Song Radio feature. But somewhere along the way, they started personalizing it so much that every radio is now basically an echo chamber of the same songs I already know, most of which I have even already added to my Liked Songs.

I built myself a small service to "disable" (work around) Spotify's hyperpersonalization by giving me the Song Radio as an anonymous user would see it. It's available at https://spoqify.com/ (with the name chosen that way so that I only need to replace a single letter in the URL of a Song Radio Playlist and it'll forward me to an unpersonalized version of it).

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

#289

Post by talhah »

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…

Wow that's amazing, do you plan to support mobile apps as well?

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

#290

Post by jesprenj »

niccl wrote: post #80

Not sure if this counts: A lighting desk for my hobby of lighting live music. For reasons I like doing live control along with the music (known as busking). Existing things are either limited and can't control moving lights, or don't have the flexibility to busk the way I want. so, having worked a long time ago for a crowd that built what were at the time the best lighting desks in the world, I built my own It has 36…

This is very interesting! I am a bit new to the hobby (I worked in a relatively small venue for 200 people a couple of times). Till now I used only QLC+ and keyboard+mouse control, which gets really boring and hard to use very soon.

Now I'm starting with designing a small controller on a protoboard with an ESP8266 -- 12 faders, 34 buttons, 4 encoders, 26 RGB LEDs. By sending raw 802.11 frames I may be able to get this thing to work wirelessly.

I'm interested in your design, would you be willing to uplaod some pictures?

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