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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?

#831

Post by cripblip »

codpiece wrote: post #516

Not sure if it counts as tech, but I created a voiceboard for my mother to help her communicate while in hospice. She had a massive stroke and could no longer speak. I thought of a tablet app, but the stakes were too high, so it wound up as a laminated paper. You can read about my design decisions here: https://voiceboard.org

This is a wonderful project, I hope someone in the community helps you with a self service version, love the thought you have put into it and Thankyou for explaining the reasoning. You should share this in the Occupational Health community.

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

#832

Post by cripblip »

HornyDude wrote: post #650

Throwaway time! I built a custom smart motorized masturbator. It borrows from 3D printer design, and has a NEMA 17 stepper motor driving a 2GT belt loop around a short length of 2020 extrusion to slide a carriage along a linear rail. The carriage has attachment points that I've put clamps on, that close around a fleshlight-style sheath. There's a brace at the business end that you put around the base of the penis and…

Dude, you have to write this up!

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

#833

Post by fuzzfactor »

mindcrime wrote: post #703

This thread is giving me a complex. Why? Well, because the answer is basically "nothing". I mean, don't get me wrong - I've built all sorts of stuff, and plenty of it was not for my $DAYJOB. And I think (at times) of myself as being fairly creative and having lots of "ideas". And yet... at least in the context of this thread (the way I'm interpreting the OP's question anyway) I just don't have much to offer up. FWIW,…

>I (want|hope|expect|whatever) other people to use, or things I would use myself in a business context.

I can admire this right here.

As a priority if you do try to solve problems that you and others share in some way, this has got to be the path toward potentially most widespread utility.

Regardless of whether you are actually on that path, which can be a more elusive yellow brick road than the problems you are skilled at solving.

No matter how cool it is there are probably some things that nobody else ends up using anyway.

There you go, you built it and it turned out to be just for yourself :)

Without any details I respect that as much as the amazing non-business context accomplishments in this topic.

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

#835

Post by reshland »

Had an older Bezzerra coffee grinder without the grind timer, which is, as you go further in to the espresso rabbit-hole a major PIA.

Got an ESP32 board with Wifi and a relay, wrote a quick webserver, some ui to access through the phone and voila, no more need for a grinder upgrade. Took about three days (moved from arduino to ESP32 due to memory issues of a large css/js UI for iphone)

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

#836

Post by dereknelson »

drcode wrote: post #593

I just moved to the bay area. I made an app that scrapes all bay area events from meetup, eventbrite, and a couple of other sites- This way you end up with around 100 events a day, way too much to read through. So next I take each event, send it to chatgpt3.5 and ask it to rate this event on around 20 parameters. Next, I take the latitude/longitude of each event and measure driving distance from my house. Then I have…

hey i'm building something very similar, pls put this on github would love to hack on it!

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

#837

Post by iainctduncan »

Mine is Scheme for Max, now on it's fourth open source release, but really written so I could make computer music how I want to. It's an extension to the popular Max/MSP visual music programming environment that embeds an s7 Scheme interpreter and provides a substantial API/FFI to Max. It allows you to script Max (and thus also Ableton Live) with Scheme, enabling interactive coding, algorithmic music, live coding, macros, and just much more pleasant scripting than in JavaScript. It locks in with the scheduler so you can even use Scheme powered sequencers within Ableton Live alongside regular Live tracks, and you can build sophisticated Live control surfaces using the Live API.

Github page here: https://github.com/iainctduncan/scheme-for-max

YouTube demos here: https://www.youtube.com/c/musicwithlisp

A recent demo of it in the context of Live is this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0sKBA-Pv2c&t=1s&ab_channel=...

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

#838

Post by dahart »

mltony wrote: post #714

Blind developer here; I often write tools for myself to perform some task that is not well supported by my screenreader. For example: * I wrote an add-on that allows me to read HN comments in a structured way. A typical screenreader would present page in a linear manner, so you'd have to read all replies in order, which is quite tedious in popular posts. My add-on parses the page and identifies the level of each comm…

BlindCompass is neat! My child told me that she had learned about the existence of compass implants and wants to get one. Would that be useful from your perspective?

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

#839

Post by potomak »

I built an app for a family member, who is a nutritionist, that makes it easier for her to stay connected with her patients via WhatsApp. It keeps track of appointments and sends automatic reminders.

Lately I decided to jump on the ChatGPT bandwagon and added a feature that integrates with the OpenAI API to suggest replies to messages from her patients.

It was overall a fun project. It gave me the chance to explore the integration with WhatsApp Business API (used to communicate with patients), OpenAI API (used to suggest message replies), Discord (used to notify events).

Apart from the APIs, it has zero dependencies. It’s deployed as a static website hosted on GitHub. The backend is written as a set of AWS Lambda functions. Data is stored in DynamoDB. Frontend is vanilla JS.

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

#840

Post by knaik94 »

I have been struggling with my circadian rhythm and have been exploring light therapy and novel techniques that will help me wake up. I learned that a smart light I bought, from Kasa, has a solid community written python library that controls it on the local network. I made a little app that adjusts the lamp color based on sunrise and sunset hours. It's relatively simple technology wise, but it's forced me to rethink how I evaluate "smart" technology.

I am thinking of expanding it to be a notification light of sorts. Not for anything related to the internet, but for chores, like the laundry machine finishing, or reminders to take a break from work. It's helped me remember to grab lunch more than a few times this week. There's something pleasant about light notifications compared to vibrations or sounds.

I am working on making an advanced wifi enabled timer using an esp32. I love the idea of a dedicated timer, seperate from my phone, that I can use day to day. I have a basic display and webserver for scheduling countdowns/alarms, but I want to incorporate some sort of keypad and a couple input buttons. There's plenty of ways in can be improved.

I also have a first generation raspberry pi monitoring my washing machine, it sends me notifications when a cycle finishes. It uses a simple ultrasonic sensor and is hosting a web server showing a readout.

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