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Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

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Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#221

Post by cranium »

I "smartified" my Actiforce standing desk.

Originally, I found the up/down buttons to be mushy and unreliable to the point I got fed up. I just wanted to 3d print a new case to have nice metal buttons but I found out the desk supports a smart controller.[1] So I reverse-engineered the connection just enough to hook an ESP32 and buttons in parallel (either can control the desk) and add up/down actions to Home Assistant via ESPHome. And my buttons have RGB LEDs for notifications. 8)

[1] If I were a company, I would have bought the controller right away because their solution is certainly less janky than mine.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#222

Post by linsomniac »

I've been a huge proponent of ALWAYS writing software just for yourself. But I'm also a fan of releasing that software.

I have a couple notable stories about that:

I had a friend that wanted to scan his album cover, and I'd always wanted a scanner, so I bought one and wrote some command-line software to do it. Then I applied that as an extension to the venerable Xv image software. Wrote it entirely for myself, ended up selling something like a thousand copies of it.

Recently, I was tired of Spotify so I wrote a Python program to export my playlists into YouTubeMusic. Released it on Github and it now is by far my most-starred project, I figure it's helped at least a thousand people move away from Spotify, I've had a bunch of contributions to it and have had several people throw money my way.

Write for yourself, give to the world.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#223

Post by piloto_ciego »

I have a notepad I built in Python that I really like. I keep a running list of notes in it that’s always available by typing “notepad” into the command line.

I have soil moisture sensors for my wife’s plants (and an air quality sensor) that’s generating a constant stream of sensor readings. I wrote my own OTA updating code for that because I was frustrated at having to plug in sensors to update the code.

I have a few calculators too.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#224

Post by osigurdson »

I recently made a cli chatgpt interface. Quick hack in Rust, always planned to clean it up, not entirely sure where the source code is for it anymore but I use the compiled binary all the time.

The regular chatgpt interface is nice but sometimes don't want to break out of the terminal.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#226

Post by piloto_ciego »

piloto_ciego wrote: post #223

I have a notepad I built in Python that I really like. I keep a running list of notes in it that’s always available by typing “notepad” into the command line. I have soil moisture sensors for my wife’s plants (and an air quality sensor) that’s generating a constant stream of sensor readings. I wrote my own OTA updating code for that because I was frustrated at having to plug in sensors to update the code. I have a fe…

Oh I forgot, I’m building our own version of that Life360 app for my family.

That code will likely never see the public light of day.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#227

Post by Gormo »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #10

I maintain a fork of tt-rss[0] that I use to follow blogs, podcasts, and YouTube. I wrote a podcatcher that used the back-end database, too. I forked it back in 2005 because the maintainer wasn't interested in the direction my patches were going. My version has diverged dramatically from the current version. I have no idea how many hours I've put into it over 19 years. It has needed surprisingly little care and feedi…

Out of curiosity, what are the design changes you've introduced into TT-RSS? I've been using it for about 15 years as well, and often get frustrated with the over-opinionated design philosophy of the project myself, so have made a couple of tweaks to my own install, but nowhere to the point of maintaining an entire fork.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#228

Post by aidenn0 »

I write various software tools to aid with running various role-playing and/or war games. Many I wrote before online code hosting was really a thing thing[1] and all of those are lost to the depths of time. For more recent tools, depending on how litigious a reputation the RPG game publisher has some were made public.

1: SourceForge launched in 1999; a lot of what I wrote predates that. Also CVS in 1999 makes git today look user-friendly; I didn't successfully get CVS to SF setup until around '02.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#229

Post by darzu »

textlapse wrote: post #206

I would love to hear from people who created their own esoteric programming language or a game engine with no game in sight. [It does speak to a time where people create something they truly are passionate about but may not fit into the typical optimization of PMF, growth etc.]

I've made https://sprig.land, a webgpu-based game engine and have plans to transpile the whole thing into a new visual scripting language I'm inventing but I'll eventually share it and do want to make games with it.

You might enjoy following https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@lisyarus, but he does ship games.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#230

Post by liamYC »

BoppreH wrote: post #132

I have a 3-letter domain that I use as my personal playground (think "xyz.com"). It features: - One-click anonymous upload of text, clipboard, and files. So from any computer, I can visit xyz.com + ctrl+v to upload the clipboard, write notes to myself, drag and drop a file, etc. It's a risky feature, but there's nothing to attract attention and you don't even get a URL back. - Authenticated sessions see a list of upl…

Cool projects, I’d definitely like my server to be able to do all these things. What have you used to deploy it?
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