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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?

#461

Post by smu »

naturalgradient wrote: post #181
eric24234 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Anything that needs even very minimal human interaction like pressing a "y" key is not automated at all. It is very common to see in the corporate environment that scripts needs some editing in b/w to be done during its running with editor which can be easily automated using sed.

An interesting effect I have noted for me when doing research is that even if it only takes one extra click or changing one parameter to generate a plot, or run some extra analysis, I will only do it selectively and start rationalising it to myself that I know when a certain plot or analysis will help and when it won't. This becomes especially egregious over month to year long experiments where I run the same experim…

And as an added bonus, your experiments are more reproducible. Kudos!

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

#462

Post by liamzebedee »

anderspitman wrote: post #276
pimeys wrote: post #108

I've automated almost all of my diabetes management into a level I basically can look into graphs and decide the level I want my glucose to go. For glucose monitoring I use Dexcom G5 sensors[0] and xDrip[1] open source monitoring application for Android. Insulin delivery is handled by a Accu-Chek Spirit Combo[2] pump, that is one of the rare pumps with a Bluetooth connection. The entity deciding the basal rates and c…

For those interested in personal T1D data management, Tidepool[0] is a fantastic (and open source) nonprofit in this space. [0] https://tidepool.org

Can also vouch. Their uploaded is super fantastic and works with many types of meters/pumps. Data stored their is also openly accessible using their API. Chris (the founder) seems like a good guy.

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

#463

Post by Darkstack »

croo wrote: post #453

Dish washing. I bought a dish washer and that machine gives back at least half hour of my life every day. I don't know how I lived without it. (disclaimer: I cook at home)

I bought a dish washer too, but i stopped using it. Don't get me wrong, I hate the doing the dishes by hand, but this is so brainless that my mind wander and I often find myself solving problem (work related) while doing it.

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

#464

Post by stevekemp »

t0mek wrote: post #47
minhazm423 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

im getting an error

Sorry, I had some DNS issues. It should be fine now.

Obligatory plug:

I automated handling DNS updates via simple "git pushes" - Lets you revert from bad changes, and gives you a good history of changes over time - https://dns-api.com/

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

#465

Post by lloeki »

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.

That'd be even better on a smartwatch... and come to think of it, Morse code might very well be the quickest method of text entry on a smartwatch...

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

#466

Post by icebraining »

brokenmachine wrote: post #404
EdCoffey wrote: post #304

1. When I plug my camera's SD card into the front of my Linux server it automatically copies off any new photos and sorts them into a YYYY/DD/MM folder structure. 2. I wrote a cryptocurrency trading bot because I'm too lazy/uninterested to actually learn anything about the market. It seemed to do pretty well when the market was flat or going up. Hard to tell if it's doing badly now or if it's just reflecting the stat…

Can you share how you do the SD card thing? I'm not sure how to autorun when an SD card is inserted (using ubuntu here).

You can use an udev rule: https://askubuntu.com/questions/489306/execute-script-on-ins...

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

#467

Post by icebraining »

beenBoutIT wrote: post #283
roryisok wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that's clever. But I'd really love if someone would invent a kind of roomba that puts away toys

Toys that put themselves away will get here before the Roomba that puts away toys does.

Good luck getting individual LEGO pieces to put themselves away :)

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

#468

Post by icebraining »

kungtotte wrote: post #132
roryisok wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Measuring the weight of the tub doesn't sound simple. A camera or ultrasonic level meter would be easier to set up

Simple and easy aren't the same thing :)

Ultrasonic distance sensors are pretty simple, though.

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

#469

Post by kieckerjan »

croo wrote: post #453

Dish washing. I bought a dish washer and that machine gives back at least half hour of my life every day. I don't know how I lived without it. (disclaimer: I cook at home)

Second that. My first dish washer came with the house I bought. Got hooked on it so badly that I had a mild panic attack when it broke down. I didn't even try to fix it (which would have taken time) but bought a new one and had it delivered the next day.

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

#470

Post by deostroll »

Not sure if this is much of an automation. But here is one app I recently did:

ANDROID POWER LOGGER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfvtrlC62mI

Above is an android app that does the power logging - at work I am able to find out if power has gone at my apartment so I can inform the electricity board and hopefully get it back up again. It turns out that the EB has a will of its own... :(

I re-did the above app with an android app called tasker - hence obviating the need for an android app. (Tasker and Join - both apps are paid and from the same developer)

Further I have some trivial apps based off of tasker. For e.g. I have an app that fetches my wallet balance. Here although the wallet app is capable of showing this...the experience is limited since, I have to do more than 2 clicks to get it. Hence, I made this information available in a single button click.

Another trivial app - is to track my upcoming train journey via tasker...(because Indian Railways web portal makes its very hard to know this particular thing).

There are others too in pipeline...

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