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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?

#31

Post by edanm »

I have several scripts that make my keyboard behave better, which is "automating" in a sense. I basically have vim-style keys anywhere on the computer, as long as I'm holding caps lock. (So e.g. caps+j is the same as down arrow). This includes some more complex motions like "select current word", and even things like "open two quotes and but the cursor between them."

I also have a script which scrapes my podcast player's website, to give me a list of podcast episodes that I already played. I save this list every day in an excel file, but the script makes this much easier - I run the script, then paste the results into the excel.

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

#32

Post by lostlogin »

u02sgb wrote: post #26
stinos wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does light increase security? I don’t pretend to know better and I like it at home so that I don’t suffer the near fatal stepped-on-Lego.

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

#33

Post by minhazm423 »

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/

im getting an error

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

#34

Post by minhazm423 »

spuz wrote: post #18

I built an accelerometer-based washing machine sensor which sends a notification to my phone when the washing is done. This is useful because the machine itself has no indication when it's done: http://www.instructables.com/id/Washing-Machine-Notification...

im getting a server error

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

#35

Post by robk »

I run a Huginn server which has hundreds of recipes. Most scrape websites and send me updates either by pushover or email for things that matter

-- news sites via rss with heavy keyword filtering for news that's important to me like hometown news etc (Google alerts style)

-- firmware updates from various devices that wouldn't otherwise notify me like kindle

-- posts up voted over X times in a period on smaller, specialized subreddits of interest

- daily digests of message boards I follow

- flight price alerts from persistent searches on routes I follow

- account updates via polling over websites like my frequent flyer accounts etc

I also love keyboard macros built into ios and have dozens for commonly used things I type.

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

#36

Post by bubblebauble »

riantogo wrote: post #27

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…

My credit card bill is paid every month by deducting from my checking, and the bank does this by default. I don't know why everyone wouldn't want this. Unless they're spending money they don't have. Interest is a sucker's game.

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

#37

Post by yurishimo »

lostlogin wrote: post #30
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.

It could also be scraped behind a login. Plenty of headless web browsers now that can be scripted to login and then start scraping.

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

#38

Post by gingerlime »

The most useful thing I have is a little script that logs into my bank, downloads a CSV and sends me the latest transaction via email daily. Saves me time to login to online banking, and also serves as a useful way to search for previous transactions inside my mailbox from time to time.

Besides that I use Home Assistant[0] with a few simple automations. For example, when the lights are on in the bathroom, and it's after dark, increase the heating/towel warmer (using Tado[1]).

Tado has its own home/away detection, plus some schedule for the heaters. It's supposed to save on energy costs.

When we're on holiday, I switch on/off various lights (with some random offset) at night... Or some times I might leave a radio on timer / connected to an IoT power switch. (I don't use any burglar alarms, cameras etc, but I try to deter them with those simple fake occupancy tools)

Philips Hue has a nice way to slowly turn the lights on. Useful to wake up during the dark winter months.

[0] https://www.home-assistant.io/

[1] https://www.tado.com/

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

#39

Post by sgroppino »

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/

This for TV would be great!
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