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Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

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Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#631

Turning on and off the bedroom heater in 1 hour intervals during the night. Also It begins warming up the bedroom at 9pm and shuts off at 0830am. I use TP-LINK HS110 which uses wifi. Super nifty. I can control it remotely also with and app, and by sending packets to it over my local Ethernet.

Have a link to the packet thing?

Sure, there are a few implementations:

https://www.google.no/search?q=tplink+hs110+github&oq=tplink...

Not too secure, you're right.

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#632
post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What solenoid did you use? I was looking into this and struggled to find an affordable valve for the water, the zwave switch is simple and I love that part of this solution!

I've had good luck with the 3/4" brass from both U.S. Solid and HFS. Both are 110 AC and range from $20-30 US on amazon. You'll have to solder on a male plug on both of these, but that's pretty straight forward. I also recommend waterproofing the wiring with some liquid electrical tape. I've been messing with a 12V DC valve by SparkFun as well. It runs around $8, but it doesn't hold up well under high pressure. Great…

Thanks! My entire house is Smartthings / Zwave...so the plug in this case will be perfect for me. Sounds like a fun project overall, appreciate the reply!

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad that these people exist but on the other hand It's hard to imagine what they do in everyday life that this topic is so interesting to them, that they want to feel this responsibility for the plant.

They've also done a lot to enrich the whole community. The daily plant gifs and a monthly voting graphic overview post have been put together by folks in the community.

How did you end up getting people interested/wanting to participate? I feel like that's the biggest hurdle.

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#634
post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, but I haven't updated the package version in a while. What is Mint (I assume you're not referring to the Linux distro)?

Mint is a financial website/app that hooks into your bank accounts, credit cards, investment accounts, loans, etc. and compiles them all into one place. It also has some built in budgeting tools and such. It's owned by Intuit. https://www.mint.com

Oh, sorry. Yeah, I've heard about it. I don't like using services like Mint or Personal Capital because they indeed run into connectivity issues sometimes. I find it not to hard to keep track of things using a simple spreadsheet.

So far I've only had to upgrade my script once, when my 401(k) provider changed the ids of some form fields.

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#635

I used Python to automate generating a chronological email/sms/phone contact archive when a home renovation project went wrong. My builder made a bunch of mistakes, tried to fob me off with excuses, and then pretended everything was ok. This integrated log was invaluable in showing discrepancies between what he said at the time and what he subsequently claimed. My Python script reads my Google Contacts csv extract to…

I would pay for this. The key is to start doing it at the very beginning, not just when things go south.

I know of a homeowner that informed his contractor(s) that he blogs daily about the progress of his renovation. The fear alone was sufficient to ensure that his project went smoothly. Plus if the contractors do a good job then they get free PR.

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#636
post #94
post #83

I automated applying for jobs a few years back. I wrote a scraper and a classifier that took a look at each job posting, determined if it required skills for technologies I wasn't familiar with, and if not, and it was also a strong enough candidate for requiring skills I'm strong with, it would send one of several appropriate resumes depending on which sort of job it was.

I would imagine you've accounted for this, but I'd highly suggest not applying for multiple jobs within the same company, with tweaked resumes/cover letters. I've seen a few of those and they always turn me off. When I'm sifting through dozens of resumes, I really don't want to feel like someone is roboblasting all of our open positions.

While I agree with this sentiment, I find it ironic I have no concern from my companies perspective where we will roboblast customers.

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#637

Creating Dungeons & Dragons characters. I found that for first time players it is difficult to overcome the initial onslaught of information and rules. So I created a form-based questionnaire that abstracts out most of the uninteresting parts of creating a character, their stats. Based on how a player answered the questions, they are emailed a filled-out character form along with relevant information to their charact…

I'd love to see the code for this, happen to have a public repo?

I just made one! It can be found here[0]. Not perfect and relies on a Google Form for now, so a Google account is needed to view and copy the form.

Also, if you want it to take sections of the Player's Handbook, you need a PDF of it! Depending on your PDF, the page numbers may need to be tweaked.

Let me know what you think!

[0] https://github.com/trevormcdonald/intro_dnd

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#638
post #209

1. A script that pulls the subject of the meetings on my calendar for that day and creates a doc of the same name in a folder on my Drive. At the end of the day, if the doc is unchanged, it deletes the doc. If the doc has changed, it places it in an archive folder to make room for tomorrow's meetings. This encourages me to take notes because my doc has already been created and it's easy to get to. (Shoot this is a wo…

Love both of these. Started working on a similar thing to #2 in python, never got around to finishing it.

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#639
Registering my kids for programs run by the City of Toronto (swim classes etc) used to be a nightmare. Registration was at 7am and the site didn't have a queuing mechanism so my wife and I would sit there with two laptops and two tablets hitting F5 repeatedly until we got in. It often took up to an hour to get in, only to find that the programs we wanted were already sold out.

I wrote a script using Selenium WebDriver that would open on multiple windows and keep re-trying until it got in. It would then process the configured list of programs we wanted to register for, find them, add the kid(s) and proceed to the checkout. Manual intervention was required to complete the purchase.

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I managed to confirm that my perceived changes in connection quality were ACTUAL changes in connection quality. I never took the time to do anything better with it though, but it does show that My provider seems to have done SOMETHING, as the speed floor has moved up, and significant events (sometimes as slow as dialup) became significantly rarer. It's also fun because it allows you to get a rough idea of how over pr…

If authentication is cookie-based, you can use a Session object in python requests: http://docs.python-requests.org/en/master/user/advanced/#ses... . If it uses http basic auth, it's even easier: http://docs.python-requests.org/en/master/user/authenticatio... Requests is a fantastic library.

Thanks for the links! The harddrive in my server died recently so I haven't had a chance to get it up and running again yet, but I will definitely update the script once I do!
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