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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?

#671

Post by xingped »

driverdan wrote: post #621
marcol1n0 wrote: post #544

My mum did run a B&B, in Italy, on the sea. Me and my sister do live in different cities. She was quite old, but did not want any help from strangers. She did refuse to use a computer keyboard, since she hated informatization, and her sight was short. So I did automate a system for her to scan the guests documents, detect the data required by local police for registration via OCR, fill up the form to send those data,…

> detect the data required by local police for registration What data do the local police require?

Hotels/hostels/B&Bs I believe are generally required to have the passport of foreign guests scanned or logged. This has been true of almost every country I've traveled to. Dunno why. Maybe they need the ID of local guests too? No idea.

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

#672

Post by ocdtrekkie »

cdiamand wrote: post #618
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people underestimate the power of IoT and automation to make independent living possible much longer. I recently installed the basics of my home automation system at my grandma's. Her keeping her thermostat set reasonably was an issue, and I've got the smoke detector on the system as well. One of the things I'd like to add is the ability to detect natural gas: She doesn't have a lot of gas appliances, but she…

I had some fun wiring one of these up for my apartment to check air quality. Relatively inexpensive, although calibration is an issue, and I'm not sure I'd trust it in an emergency. https://www.adafruit.com/product/3199

Personally my preference is towards consumer products where possible, because they require less effort and look more presentable... Especially when its for a non-technical user. For instance, the smoke detector is a First Alert. It appears First Alert does have a natural gas detector, but it doesn't appear they make it with support for their Onelink protocol.

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

#673

Post by imhoguy »

galfarragem wrote: post #474

I try to simplify / reduce deeds as much as reasonable. An healthy dose of Minimalism will get you more peace of mind than automation. Automation might break at some point and you need to be ready to fix it.

Exactly this. These family calls because home automation gone mad when you are not around... the simpler the better.

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

#674

Post by faitswulff »

watyousay wrote: post #330
faitswulff wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same general category, I just wrote a script to download episodes of anime as they're released.

Would you be willing to go into some more detail on how it works? I use Sonarr and Hydra2 with a handful of private indexers and for most TV its the perfect solution.. but for anime it's the pits. For whatever reason the anime ripper scene seems to be actively resistant to this sort of automation.

My use case is really simple. I just use a script to fetch the latest free episode of My Hero Academia from CrunchyRoll with youtube-dl.

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

#675

Post by IloveHN84 »

AlphaWeaver wrote: post #593
justacat wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious: How do you write code for Trello? I didn't realize there was an approach for this

Yeah, as mentioned, Trello's API is pretty expansive.

Also the data they share online due to security bugs

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

#676

Post by lma21 »

chobytes wrote: post #640
avshyz wrote: post #603

I'm 25, and single. I'm very social, and I work out regularly. But I find it hard to approach women in the street, and I've always detested loud pubs (My hearing is slightly impaired, which makes it hard for me to communicate in such a place). So I've decided to sign in to OKCupid. I've always heard the dating scene in this site is toxic, but I've had no idea. I've too many toxic and horrible things written plainly i…

This sounds like a giant red flag to me. I hope you at least disclose your methods to people you contact.

What, why? It looks a reasonable solution for a missing 'filtering' feature :-)

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

#677

Post by lostlogin »

DenisM wrote: post #251
dancek wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do I want to keep kindergarten photos of my kids, or why don't I want to manually save them one by one from the website? Why do you ask?

The question was directed at lostlogin, not you. I’m interested to know why people object to have their kids pictures on the sites of the daycare providers.

It’s more that I don’t know the reason it’s being taken. We have had photos taken by tourists that have sidled up and taken photos and had companies take photos then ask for permission for use in promotion. We felt pressure to accept these after the event, though didn’t.

And then there is privacy.

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

#679

Post by Numberwang »

atmoz wrote: post #665
Numberwang wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My fathers automower got destroyed when a moose decided to stomp it. Also in southern Sweden.

Reminds me of a similar incident in Norway, caught on tape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho8o92Ro-Ig Some CS students even made a game based on the hilarious video, where you play as the moose and must eat apples while defending against incoming lawnmowers: https://joelspeanuts.itch.io/elgspillet

Wow, that is probably exactly what happened. Funnily enough it looks very much like my parents place.

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

#680

Post by noxToken »

ghaff wrote: post #561
noxToken wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are three problems with most slow cooker recipes. 1.) My hi/low setting probably doesn't match your hi/low setting. From the get go, we're cooking the same meal at two different temperatures. 2.) A lot of recipes seem to call for low setting for 8 hours. This works well for a lot of people with a standard American work day, since a stew/soup will stay above safe warming temperature in a nearly sealed po…

Rozanne Gold made something of a career out of cookbooks using short, simple ingredient lists and mostly easy prep. I don't care as much any longer as I mostly work from home, but my work night preference--as opposed to slow cookers--has always tended toward the fast, easy saute. Especially with so many pre-prepped vegetables etc. in the grocery store these days, it seems like the best option for my tastes.

I'm a huge fan of simple meals that don't involve a crock pot. There are so many variations on stir fry, that you can eat a distinctly different tasting meal every day of the week. You can even combine the two to help with meal prepping.

Brown a flank steak in a pan. We're not sealing in juices - we're making a crust. Throw it in the slow cooker for a few hours. Check to make sure it's tender. Prep some veggies by cutting and portioning them in containers. Find a stew sauce that's simple. When you're ready to eat, saute your veggies in a little oil, and add a generous portion of sauce when your stir fry is near complete. Throw in the meat towards to end to heat. Serve over potatoes or rice or something simple.

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