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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?

#651

Post by stevekemp »

opayen wrote: post #613
stevekemp wrote: post #503

I built a device to show the departure time of trams at the end of my street, to avoid walking to the stop too soon, and having to stand in subzero temperatures for too long. (I live in Helsinki, and it was the end of last year when I put this together. Temperatures were colder than -20C for a week or two.)

Could you give more details about it? What device is it? How does it work?

I remember posting about it here in the past, because I was so in love with the service that allowed me - a complete beginner - to get a case 3d-printed cheaply and easily.

The project itself is documented here:

https://steve.fi/Hardware/helsinki-tram-times/

It consists of an LCD-screen and an ESP8266 device. (Think "like an arduino, but with on-board wifi". Programmed in C++ it basically polls an online URL to decide what to display with a simple web interface you can point your browser at to change the timezone, the stop-id being monitored, etc.

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

#652

Post by live3dio »

someguy101010 wrote: post #449
live3dio wrote: post #422

Used python and selenium webdriver to scrape free movie pirate sites for URLs and images. The script had to traverse the pirate sites using id tags, and simulate a click in the movie iframe for the site to populate the iframe's src attribute. Then it generates a static html page from that list of URLs. It automatically updates a netflix style website for me and my friends to watch movies. This negates all the pirate…

link that thing dude or pm it to me

https://freemovies.services

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

#653

Post by stevekemp »

anotherevan wrote: post #317

I have an ultrasonic sensor on top of my monitor to tell the computer when I'm in front of it or not. If music is playing when I walk away from my computer, it pauses the music player. When I return, it starts playing again. It will also wake the monitors from power saving mode when I return, too. https://www.michevan.id.au/content/are-you-there/

Here's my version of that, via an ESp8266, and MQ:

https://github.com/skx/esp8266/tree/master/d1-distance

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

#654

Post by stevekemp »

jrowley wrote: post #331
anotherevan wrote: post #317

I have an ultrasonic sensor on top of my monitor to tell the computer when I'm in front of it or not. If music is playing when I walk away from my computer, it pauses the music player. When I return, it starts playing again. It will also wake the monitors from power saving mode when I return, too. https://www.michevan.id.au/content/are-you-there/

Thats awesome! I have a related system for pausing music, but never thought of using an ultrasonic sensor. I might need to add that in! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14151439

I have something similar, linked above.

If you're in a cube I wonder if you'd be better suited to an IR-beam break? If you have to walk through an "entrance" you could detect that happening pretty easily - although you'd want to avoid flaps to handle the case of somebody leaving too.

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

#655

Post by quickthrower2 »

briandear wrote: post #588
aoeuasdf1 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be able to use https://opentimestamps.org/ to provide evidence over time (i.e. proving it wasn't fabricated all at once). Still, that doesn't prove that the individual points weren't fabricated at the time.

Blockchain?

"I was on Mars on 13/10/2017"

Still a lie, even in the blockchain

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

#656

Post by greggyb »

jcun4128 wrote: post #529
artpi wrote: post #102

I have set up a battery of scripts on google app engine and Im pretty happy with it. 1. I have a script to automatically buy small amount of BTC every day 2. For the more knowledge-dense books I read, I write summaries of them ( https://piszek.com/books/ ). I have a script that puts a random book review to my pocket for reviewing every week 3. I have an instagram account of lego minifig ( https://www.instagram.com/le…

I like the idea of "a battery of scripts" I wonder about legality if say your code scrapes sites or does something uncool. Anyway, yeah I've got that problem right now wrote code for a specific stack need to just drop it into a server that's not mine/easy for client to use. I'm kind of curious about #1 regardless of the price you buy? What if it was like that day the ICO was banned and it dropped like $800 or whateve…

Wouldn't it be good to buy on the day it dropped $800? Then you have either - more BTC than expected for the same $ - spend less $ on the same amount of BTC

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

#657

Post by greggyb »

jldugger wrote: post #241
marvinpinto wrote: post #45

I automated downloading and reconciling my financials from all my bank accounts. https://disjoint.ca/projects/ledger-reconciler

On a related note, I have gnucash set up to autocreate a ton of transactions 90 days in advance. Rent, salary, typical bills, student loan repayment, etc. At some point my plan is to automate the following tasks: 1. Sweep checking into savings based on forecasted transactions. Useful since interest is like 10x more in savings. 2. Update asset values daily. 3. Update autocreated transactions as the invoices are emaile…

Perhaps something you've already considered, but if you're going to spend time on automation of sweeping extra out of checking, you might want to put that into some index funds rather than a savings account to optimize on return.

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

#658

Post by JadeNB »

vxxzy wrote: post #150

I automated the birth announcement of my child using Tropo. Basically I had an app where, when I sent it the magical command ("here"), it generated a text and call to all family members with a canned message. Saved me a bunch of time :)

This will be especially handy once you also automate the creation of children.

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

#659

Post by elyrly »

mintplant wrote: post #96

I have a system built on top of Calibre's "recipe" scripts which scans a set of RSS feeds every day at 3am for new articles, scrapes and cleans the full content where necessary, bundles them into .mobi ebooks, and sends them to my Kindle's email address. Amazon's network wirelessly delivers them overnight, and I wake up in the morning with a fresh batch of reading material. It's like a personalized newspaper subscrip…

So simple!!! Time to build this for my train ride

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

#660

Post by elyrly »

mysterypie wrote: post #510

Many of automation ideas here bring an edge to one person at the expense of everyone else. The ideas fail completely if too many people start doing the same thing. Actual examples from people on this list: - User pokes immigration website repeatedly to submit his application as soon as the site starts accepting. Obviously if everyone did the same thing, no one would benefit. The thing that needs fixing is an immigrat…

Some of those are boarder line DDoS
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