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Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#21

Post by naturalgradient »

nottorp wrote: post #6

Funny enough, possibly because I work on embedded software for automating random processes, and also from home, I don't feel the need to automate anything not work related. When you spend most of your day stuck in front of a monitor, it feels good to get up and turn lights on/off.

Me too, at work (PhD student) I take enormous pleasure in writing end to end fully automated pipelines. Nothing that needs to be done more than once isnt automated pretty much. At home, I would never buy or use an Alexa/Google assistant/use Siri or any 'smart' device, I simply don't want to bother with it.

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#24

Post by dancek »

nottorp wrote: post #6

Funny enough, possibly because I work on embedded software for automating random processes, and also from home, I don't feel the need to automate anything not work related. When you spend most of your day stuck in front of a monitor, it feels good to get up and turn lights on/off.

I can relate to this. I would like some remote control features though but then I always consider what a hacker could do and what's the worst that could happen if the system malfunctions.

Quite often the worst-case scenario is a fire, so the little benefit is IMHO not worth the risk.

I'm talking about self-made hacks and cheap Chinese hardware here.

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#26

Post by u02sgb »

stinos wrote: post #15
78zeros wrote: post #5

Hallway lights come on automatically at sunset. Heating comes on at 4.30am in cooler months, turns off when we leave to go to work (along with the bedroom, hallways and kitchen lights which come on at 6am) Heating comes back on at 2pm if outside air temperature is below a certain threshold. Bathroom floor heating and towel rail switch on and off at various times during the morning, afternoon and evening depending on…

Hallway lights come on automatically at sunset. Does this mean you constantly have light there even when you're not around? Any particular reason for that (maybe the switches for it are placed awkwardly or so?)

Security. I do this too.

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#27

Post by riantogo »

Monthly credit card payments. So money flows from my employer to my checking account to my credit cards. Also of course to my 401K, IRA, Mortgage account, Saving account etc. Which means I don't encounter money much and I like it this way (I generally make sure I live within my means and my money does flow into my investments).

Downsides:

-I'm not actively thinking about money and hence improved investments

-I'm not monitoring credit card errors

-Comcast gradually increased increased my bill from $44/mo to $103/mo without any resistance from my side

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#28

Post by spuz »

t0mek wrote: post #23

I used DSP to recognize the commercials in the radio broadcast on my stereo receiver and turn down the volume automatically ("adblock for the radio broadcast"). I described it here: http://blog.rekawek.eu/2016/02/24/radio-adblock/

That is genius.

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#29

Post by StavrosK »

I made a sensor board that has light, motion, temperature and humidity sensors and IR LEDs and put one in every room. I put Sonoffs on the lights and various other devices and wrote a small managing program to coordinate the lot, so lights turn on when you walk into a dark room and turn off if there's no motion or if you turn on another light. The IR LEDs also control the TV/AC/etc.

I've also added various other things to it like Wifi presence notification, so it sends me a notification if a guest arrives, and hooked it up to Kodi and an Amazon Echo so I can say things like "play Iron Man" and it will turn on the TV, put on the movie and turn off the lights.

Not super useful stuff, but it was fun.

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#30

Post by lostlogin »

dancek wrote: post #19

Screen scraping photos of my kids from a kindergarten website. Recognizing good photos that feature my kids and deleting everything else is manual, though. Alerts to my phone if the fridge or freezer temperature exceeds a limit or the humidity under my dishwasher starts rising. Granted, neither are fully automatic and require manual intervention.

I wouldn’t be that pleased with a childcare facility taking photos of my kid then putting them on the internet. I suspect I’m in a small minority though.
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