Huginn: System for building agents that perform automated tasks online
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Re: Huginn: System for building agents that perform automated tasks online
#2Not to be confused with Hugin [1], the FOSS panoramic photo utility.
Re: Huginn: System for building agents that perform automated tasks online
#3Is anyone here an active user of Huginn? Basically roll your own Zapier. I’ve always been interested in it but never taken the time to get it set up and configured.
Re: Huginn: System for building agents that perform automated tasks online
#4I tried using this a year or two ago—seemed like a really cool idea, and I still think it is—but I couldn't find an actually useful application for it in my life.
Not saying there aren't plenty of neat applications out there, but once the initial "that's cool" feeling wore off, I wasn't sure how to actually get some value out of the system. For me, it felt like a time sink.
Curious to know if others have found use cases that are low-maintenance and high-value.
Re: Huginn: System for building agents that perform automated tasks online
#5I toyed a bit with this and also node red.
Ultimately decided the learning overhead and yet another system running isn’t worth it. Instead building python code > dockerize > deploy CI pipeline.
Slightly more general purpose tool I think though at loss of the drag and drop low code convenience
Re: Huginn: System for building agents that perform automated tasks online
#6I tried using this a year or two ago—seemed like a really cool idea, and I still think it is—but I couldn't find an actually useful application for it in my life. Not saying there aren't plenty of neat applications out there, but once the initial "that's cool" feeling wore off, I wasn't sure how to actually get some value out of the system. For me, it felt like a time sink. Curious to know if others have found use ca…
I agree, I've never quite been able to figure out anything useful over alternatives. Like the usual "send me an SMS when the weather will be rainy" example - I use a highly customizable weather app that gives me more power to send me stuff like that without having to fiddle with a new system.
This system's integration with Mechanical Turk could be interesting, but I'm too dumb right now to figure out some cool things I could do with it.
Re: Huginn: System for building agents that perform automated tasks online
#7I toyed a bit with this and also node red. Ultimately decided the learning overhead and yet another system running isn’t worth it. Instead building python code > dockerize > deploy CI pipeline. Slightly more general purpose tool I think though at loss of the drag and drop low code convenience
I definitely think there needs to be some kind of sea change for this kind of tool to really have an impact. I fret that there's not enough middle-brow interest in tech & computers for even the best designed, most capable user-scripter (like Huginn or Node-RED) to become truly high impact. Developers tend to find a lot of value add versus deploying whatever industrial ops practices they know. So whose left to support & nurture these interesting vanguards, these more comprehensively-built & user-focused computing environments?
And reciprocally getting started with a project like this is somewhat daunting for the newcomer, while at the same time they're bombarded by far more options & places to get started in computing than they can handle. I think most folk kind of swear off involvement, don't have a way to casually check out a couple random computing attempts easily, dabble & sample. Computing rebuffs interest, alas.
I still believe in change. The dis-interest in computing is obvious & clear to me today, because most computing is back on shitty mainframes (cloud) in places we can't see or poke at (apps, cloud). Trying to better merge the developers back into the folk would help a lot. But real wins are needed broadly to tell users they're wanted on the other side, to make exploration fun and cool again.
Re: Huginn: System for building agents that perform automated tasks online
#8I found this a few years ago and was super intrigued JARVIS-like potential and dove into it. There's a STEEP learning curve but once you get it figured out a couple times, it's really powerful and you can do a lot.
My problem is that the things I could do.. didn't particularly seem useful. Sure, knowing the weather is useful but I can get a pretty good idea on my own or checking the times I need to know more. Knowing about trends up/down in my stock is only useful if I'm going to act. Now that I have solar, I can see some more use cases but most are also around curiosity vs knowing when to take action.
I may come to a different conclusion if I build an armored combat suit.
Or for a more realistic and fun story, check out Daniel Suarez's Daemon. It's great.
Re: Huginn: System for building agents that perform automated tasks online
#9I toyed a bit with this and also node red. Ultimately decided the learning overhead and yet another system running isn’t worth it. Instead building python code > dockerize > deploy CI pipeline. Slightly more general purpose tool I think though at loss of the drag and drop low code convenience
I definitely think there needs to be some kind of sea change for this kind of tool to really have an impact. I fret that there's not enough middle-brow interest in tech & computers for even the best designed, most capable user-scripter (like Huginn or Node-RED) to become truly high impact. Developers tend to find a lot of value add versus deploying whatever industrial ops practices they know. So whose left to support…
We had a roll out of a (good) low code finance tool at work and frankly the uptake was breathtakingly underwhelming.
The average user is substantially less computer literate than most techies assume. The jump from navigating menus in excel to the logical flow of code just isn’t there, regardless of graphic or not.
I don’t mean that in a “users are stupid” sense but rather that the missing piece can’t really be filled in by low or no code. It’s the thinking pattern that’s missing entirely, not an issue with how that pattern is expressed.
Personally I don’t think it’ll change. If anything it is getting worse. Alexa and friends make people think there is some sort of magic that can be tapped into. Mirror opposite of how a programmer would reason through code flow.
Re: Huginn: System for building agents that perform automated tasks online
#10Is anyone here an active user of Huginn? Basically roll your own Zapier. I’ve always been interested in it but never taken the time to get it set up and configured.
When I looked into it some time ago, what tripped me up was that it seemed that you needed to deploy it using Docker. Otherwise, you'd have quite an involving set up process: install Ruby, Rails, then a database. Then you'd probably want to figure out a set up to enable https + SSL. I had it running locally and was quite impressed by it, but wasn't ready to go the full Dockerized route on a VPS at that time. Maybe now I would.. just need to find the time.
Personally, I think a project like Huginn would have more success if the code was in GoLang (easier to deploy) or Python (more popular language = people more willing to set it up) and used SqlLite for the backend. And if it had SSL/https baked in, out of the box. For comparison purposes, I distinctly remember how much I appreciated that Nextcloud had it baked in. So I ran NC very happily for quite a while and skipped out on Huginn.