I've used Automate App ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.llamalab.a... ) to set my android phone to silent mode in office and loud at home based on the wifi ssid.
For those on iOS, built-in Shortcuts app can do this as well.
Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?
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Re: Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?
#42Hire a cleaner once every 10-11 days to clean my apartment and do the laundry. Its surprising how much time you have if you don’t have to do dishes.
How do you not do the dishes for 10+ days?
That said, my wife and I do the same thing. Plus have a Roomba. All told it means everything stays clean and we're only on the hook for laundry.
Re: Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?
#43I use cron to send myself birthday reminder emails: 0 0 9 11 * /usr/bin/mail -s "REMINDER: Nov 9 is Marks birthday" me@mydomain.com Or just annual reminders or warnings I want to heed: 0 0 1 8 * /usr/bin/mail -s "REMINDER: MAKE christmas St. Francis reservations NOW for good pricing..." me@mydomain.com Sometimes, instead of /usr/bin/mail, I use 'smsme' which is a small script that interfaces with twilio: /usr/local/b…
What’s wrong with reminder apps that are default with all smart phones?
Re: Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?
#44Lots of home automation fun with Home Assistant (https://www.home-assistant.io)
* Self-hosted security system that e-mails me when triggered. It arms when everyone disconnects from the wifi and disarms when anyone in the home reconnects to wifi. Totally passive. Also arms at night when the kitchen lights have been out for 5 minutes after a certain time and disarms when motion patterns that can only be someone waking up are sensed.
* E-mails work and personal when smoke alarm goes off or when water is detected in basement
* E-mails pic from front door camera when doorbell pressed (yeah, like Ring, but with a ESP8266 monitoring my normal doorbell)
* Voice reminder on garbage day
* Northern loon call exactly at each sunset
* Ambient jungle noises and lights on when I wake up and it sees me
* Laundry timer + reminders
* Vacation mode random lights on/off
* Plays a Ship's bell chime on the hour, but only during daytime (ambiance)
* Tones when any outside door in the house opens. Optionally: random Seinfeld bass transitions
* Alert for power outage
* Alert if my mom's house temperature goes too low in winter when she's away (I've called the plumber to fix the furnace thanks to this)
* Turn on A/C if temperature above threshold at 4:00pm in anticipation of my return from work
Stuff like that. Loads of fun. Lots of fiddling.
Re: Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?
#45Minor stuff. Any logins that require password (git/ssh), all the command line operations that I do more than one time (I start with moving them to text file and when it gets tedious - to shell scripts, saves surprising lots of time).
Re: Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?
#46I use automatic bill pay and some scripts to fix video player settings, that's about it for full automation.
A lot of things are semi-automated, as in I have a script / specialized software to handle them, but I still run them by hand. I have a paperweight suitable for holding down the enter key which comes in handy sometimes.
I use the repeating events feature in Google Calendar a lot, that seems to mystify people who think I put them all in by hand.
The automation people seem to fall into a few camps: smart home, enterprise data, and vacation. The last is referring to the sort of people who build a business, hire some low-paid folks to do all the work "automatically", and take a vacation. This seems like cheating to me but whatever.
Re: Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?
#47I live in a condo complex with a dog and no lawn. We learned after getting our dog that this place doesn’t want dogs going to the bathroom on any of the common area (makes sense but annoying to dog owners). We used to get a small patch of grass delivered every week but it was a hassle to swap each time. Also it was disgusting by the end of the week. Then I discovered porch potty. Got the version that is hooked up wit…
> We used to get a small patch of grass delivered every week haha, WHAT??
Sod-as-a-Service (SaaS)
Re: Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?
#48My typing. In my work I tend to type a lot of the same things over and over again. So I automate that with AutoHotKey. Ctrl+Tab becomes RightAlt. Two words become entire paragraphs. Even simple things like "You're welcome" are just 'ywyw' or 'tyvm' becomes "Thank you very much". I know it sounds silly, but while trying to avoid RSI's, the less typing the better. I also use autohotkey to help me remember to Linux comm…
I wonder if it would be possible to build an app that's effectively a self-installed keylogger given access to your entire stream of writing, and after a few days, it starts to recommend candidate strings for automation with Autohotkey.
This was the idea behind the Blackberry Android keyboard.
Source: Was there, wrote code for it.
Re: Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?
#49I automate most things I do more than a dozen times.
Marketing for my wife's uncle was a pain, so we automated CL and FB posts to fire from Quickbooks Inventory on a schedule.
I'm full-time remote, so I have a spreadsheet that tracks my expenses from a google form, does currency conversions for my location and forex analysis to tell me the best day to pull money from an ATM, tells me how much I have to spend on food each morning...
There's a script I send quotes I like to, and it randomly sends me one from the list via Telegram every day at 6am.
I'm also a swing-trader who hates staring at charts, so my watchlist generates via news and sentiment, then I run TA on that watchlist to send me alerts if a signal is generated, then all I have to do is hit buy/sell on my inline keyboard and it sends off a market order; it auto-exits after a target or stop loss is hit.
Recently formed an agency with a few other automation devs who do similar stuff if you want to check it out: https://weautomatestuff.com
Re: Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?
#50I have a motion light at the bottom of the basement steps.
I also write scripts to compare OpenStreetMap to external datasets and surface interesting differences.