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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?

#411

Post by laumars »

sleet wrote: post #329
nojvek wrote: post #205

When the dog used to wake me up in the middle of the night to drink water and take him out, I had to do to it manually. Now it’s all automated, my body just does it. 90% of brain is asleep. I look forward to automating diaper changes when the baby arrives. The subconscious brain is an incredible piece of technology.

Seems like an odd solution. Can't you just leave a bowl of water out? Does your dog have bladder control issues?

Bowl plus dog flap would be my approach. But my back garden is safe to leave a dog unattended (high fences and set deep in a quiet residential surrounded by farm land).

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

#412

Post by A_Person »

sudouser wrote: post #385
A_Person wrote: post #170

Ok, I'll bite! About 20 years ago I inherited enough money to retire on for the rest of my life. But the only evidence of those assets was, a dot matrix printout that anyone could have done in five minutes. So over the next few weeks, I created accounts in the various share registries and online banking websites, and manually cross-checked the printed list against those accounts. All was good, but I wanted to do that…

ever tried sikulix? it clicks the things

Nope, never heard of it. My software certainly has to click lots of thing! But it also has to do lots of data processing behind the scenes. So the clickety click is only part of the story :-)

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

#413

Post by newnewpdro »

megy wrote: post #397
_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I lived in India, it was cheaper to hire someone to wash clothes and dishes by hand than to buy a washing machine or dish washer (and the place we lived wouldn't have had anywhere to put them anyway). [Though half the time we did these things (by hand) ourselves.]

I mean, of course. It is cheaper to do that anywhere in the world. The trick is to use the washing machine more than once.

I laughed, but my impression is that due to overpopulation it's incredibly cheap to rent a human for such tasks there. It'd probably take years to spend what the machines cost, and they take space (a premium, see: overpopulation) and require maintenance.

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

#414

Post by klekih »

DoubleGlazing wrote: post #284

I have semi-automated cooking for the week ahead. We recently started cooking meals for the week ahead on Sundays and then freezing them. The aim was to give us more time with the kids and to cut down on housework. To save time on the Sunday cooking session I have cobbled together a very clunky, and I mean VERY clunky semi-automated cooking system. It comprises a Raspberry PI which controls a couple of WiFi mains swi…

And how much time did you spend automating those things? Is it worth? i.e Is the time spent on cooking minus time spent on automating a positive number?

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

#415

Post by aws_ls »

elvisds wrote: post #361
DoubleGlazing wrote: post #284

I have semi-automated cooking for the week ahead. We recently started cooking meals for the week ahead on Sundays and then freezing them. The aim was to give us more time with the kids and to cut down on housework. To save time on the Sunday cooking session I have cobbled together a very clunky, and I mean VERY clunky semi-automated cooking system. It comprises a Raspberry PI which controls a couple of WiFi mains swi…

A friend is getting such a system to production for Indian recipes with Mechnical Chef [1] The demo looks incredibly cool [2] [1] http://www.mechanicalchef.com/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBB0ZaN1paE

Your friend is a genius! Any idea, how much is it going to cost? And will they plan to sell it in India?

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

#416

Post by aws_ls »

klekih wrote: post #414
DoubleGlazing wrote: post #284

I have semi-automated cooking for the week ahead. We recently started cooking meals for the week ahead on Sundays and then freezing them. The aim was to give us more time with the kids and to cut down on housework. To save time on the Sunday cooking session I have cobbled together a very clunky, and I mean VERY clunky semi-automated cooking system. It comprises a Raspberry PI which controls a couple of WiFi mains swi…

And how much time did you spend automating those things? Is it worth? i.e Is the time spent on cooking minus time spent on automating a positive number?

(Not OP) I think, it is worth a lot, just for the fact, that if you are the lazy partner/spouse in the house. Then you can make things easier for the one that does the bulk of the chores.

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

#417

Post by andrewstuart2 »

klekih wrote: post #414
DoubleGlazing wrote: post #284

I have semi-automated cooking for the week ahead. We recently started cooking meals for the week ahead on Sundays and then freezing them. The aim was to give us more time with the kids and to cut down on housework. To save time on the Sunday cooking session I have cobbled together a very clunky, and I mean VERY clunky semi-automated cooking system. It comprises a Raspberry PI which controls a couple of WiFi mains swi…

And how much time did you spend automating those things? Is it worth? i.e Is the time spent on cooking minus time spent on automating a positive number?

One of these activities builds upon highly valuable skills and, when done, leaves more time to build upon said skills (or do anything else). The other does not.

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

#418

Post by foobaw »

kilroy123 wrote: post #364
LifeofPi314 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where and how do you afford this?

I can only do this because I live abroad in Latin America. Sadly, wages are very low for this kind of work. Though I did have a cleaning person come twice a month, when I lived in the Pacific Northwest, I could never afford all this much help living in the US.

I used to live in Central America and most foreigners from the US had their own maids. Some maids even had their own room in the house and lived with the family (great for babysitting, cleaning, cooking, etc)

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

#419

Post by rkachowski »

YaxelPerez wrote: post #119

I used Tasker to make my phone vibrate in Morse code. Now I don't have to take it out of my pocket to read a notification.

This is genius. I've been wanting to do some kind of mobile app with morse code functionality to scratch a nerdy itch, and this seems like an awesome project idea

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

#420

Post by koevet »

I have automated a couple of metrics that I like to keep an eye on.

Credit card expenditure: since my old-school bank has no API of sort, I trigger via Tasker a daily sms to a bank number that replies with the amount left before I get to my CC limit. I then parse the sms (Tasker again, using JS) and display the amount that I have spent so far on the home of my mobile. This simple warning has dramatically helped me to keep my CC expenditure in check.

Goodreads yearly target: using a combination of Tasker, Goodreads API and some JS, I display the amount of pages I have to read each day in order to reach my yearly target of books (assuming an average length of a book of 250 pages).

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