301–310 of 1001 posts
I re-created a stock ticker machine. I saw an article about them on here and thought "oh that would be cool to have one, lets try and buy one" I realised that they cost $4k+. So I made my own. https://www.secretbatcave.co.uk/projects/stock-ticker-machin... Its not strictly electro mechanical like the original, that was too far out of my mechanical design skills.
So I made a KVM instance which does one thing - login automatically, start Firefox, login with Selenium, then uses some kind of other Python desktop control contraption to press CTRL-S, tab-tab, save the web page to the Downloads folder.
Then, the python program proceeds to parse the HTML (with BeautifulSoup), extract the schedule times from how they are showed in some or other (super weird ugly text format). Checks for changes over time and emails her what has changed. (So she gets a notice when her schedule changes and she doesn't have to periodically check in with the app.)
Finally converts the schedule to calendar format and publishes on a web site so the schedule can also be seen in the phone calendar.
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.
My wife has her work schedule in a mobile web app, but the app is really bad. Turns out the app is just a wrapper around a web site. So I made a KVM instance which does one thing - login automatically, start Firefox, login with Selenium, then uses some kind of other Python desktop control contraption to press CTRL-S, tab-tab, save the web page to the Downloads folder. Then, the python program proceeds to parse the HT…
It's been fun having a project where i can just throw in stuff i want to learn (started out as a go + go templates app, then turned into go backend + vue frontend from scratch, now go + vue with vuetify) and where i can just implement features i want (pocket import for saved links, gpt stuff, linking between notes and saved links/rss entries, ...) that are extremely specific to my use case and thus hard to find in anything else.
Scheduling the script to reliably run via Task Scheduler (Windows) was was its own project!
I attribute around half of the Japanese I still know to repeating cards incessantly one after another for months, few years ago:
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…
My townhome complex had one of those call boxes at the front gate. When Doordash/FedEx/the cleaners/the in-laws/etc arrived they would have to call me from the call box and I'd have to answer it and listen to garbled audio to figure out who it was and press 9 to open the gate. It was kind of a pain, so I made a Twilio app to answer calls from the call box. I set up custom entry codes that I could hand out to anyone.…
I co-organized a weekly hacknight meetup of 40-70 people. I wrote a script to make Anki spaced repetition flash card decks with avatars and names pulled from the meetup API. I would use GitHub Actions to run the script a few hours before the event, then drop the importable deck into a Google Drive folder. I'd review the deck before the meetup, and then at the event, I'd not stress about names. I'd pretend to introduc…
I remember going to an arduino hack group once. When I went to introduce myself to the organiser he cut me off mid-sentence with a flat "I know who you are Lio" and a unblinking stare.
Now, in tech circle we often have people that are a bit "rough" when it comes to human interaction so I make allowances.
I think what he meant was I recognise you from Twitter or something. As far as I know we get along fine and I've had absolutely no issues with him before or after.
All the same, it freaked me the fuck out at the time. :D