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

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571–580 of 749 posts

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

#571

A few years ago I used Trello to keep track of my tasks for the day in a Kanban board separated by date. I had a large backlog of tasks and then a "Due this Month" "Due this Week" "Due Tomorrow" and "Due Today" sections. First I wrote code that automatically moved cards between the different sections, so I only ever had to look at the "Due Today" list. Then I used Twilio to build a bot that gave me a wake up call eve…

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

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

#572

I have a robot lawn mower that is wire guided. Instead of the traditional lawn mowers that basically cut the grass in all directions (making a sloppy cut pattern) my mower knows how to cut in straight lines so you get a traditional cut pattern. It also has the ability to dump the grass cuttings into a composting bin. Basically, I put down wire guide cable into the lawn and into the cement as well. It is all powered b…

Please do a writeup on this! One of the reasons I've been dragging my feet on home ownership is I'm not a fan of lawn mowing. Now if only you could also automate shoveling/snowblowing.

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

#573
post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not particularly complicated but it’s far from optimal. If you’re not doing anything special your profits are taxed as ordinary income but you don’t get to deduct business expenses, nor do you get to count that income toward deductions like self employed healthcare or retirement account contributions.

Now you're just debating additional income. However, say your company lost -$10,000. If you profited $10,000 in stocks -- you technically made $0 in profit, which means you still don't need to pay taxes, even on the profit on stocks. ...and if your business is really killing it, and you're also killing it in the stock market, I am certain you won't have a problem paying a few dollars to the US Gov. It's still better…

Your "business" losses offset personal trading gains? This is fraud.

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

#574
post #269
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think modern washers weigh the clothes and change their cycles based off that and other information. Mine is similar but seems to always overestimate the time instead, which is probably the better failure state.

Some industrial laundries do this, but I have heard this over and over again to describe residential HE laundry machines but never actually seen one with a way to measure this. The usual method is to tumble the clothes until the water level in the tub stops dropping. Now they're saturated with water. What you are probably getting when you start your washer is an estimate considering the steps of the cycle and loaded…

We bought an LG washer and drying last year that tries to be smart and it drives me nuts. When you start it, it takes several minutes moving the tub in very small increments. It starts and stops and reverses over-and-over and I assume it's sensing the load. Then it starts and occasionally the balance is off and I does the thump-thump-thump thing. So I stop it, rearrange the load and restart. Instead of just resuming, it goes through the sensing dance again and I have to stand there three or four minutes before it actually starts to spin again.

If I could turn all the load sensing stuff off, I would. All I really want is two sliders that give me 0-100% for load size and temperature and a switch for delicate.

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

#575

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,…

That is brilliant. Did it take much maintenance?

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

#576

A few years ago I used Trello to keep track of my tasks for the day in a Kanban board separated by date. I had a large backlog of tasks and then a "Due this Month" "Due this Week" "Due Tomorrow" and "Due Today" sections. First I wrote code that automatically moved cards between the different sections, so I only ever had to look at the "Due Today" list. Then I used Twilio to build a bot that gave me a wake up call eve…

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

You might want to look at this: https://trello.readme.io/docs/api-introduction

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

#577
post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a reddit comment from /r/Programming is it not?

No. true story. circa 2012.

Reminds me of a Scorpion episode where Walter automates texts to follow up on a date.

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

#578
For myself, I've built a web-based task manager. Nothing fancy, apache, PHP and JavaScript. It's tied into a number of the systems I have running at home, such as a similarly built budgeting platform that handles all our money and sends me a biweekly report of all the payments I need to schedule, and any checks I need to write (usually just rent.)

I've also setup some things for the wife, who's an artist on Patreon, where she uploads works she's finished to a given folder and my machine grabs them, resizes them to whatever she needs for different purposes, and emails them to her. It also applies watermarks depending on the appearance of it (light vs dark) and will also add it to her Jekyll website, commit the new image to the git repo, build and push it live with no interaction unless something blows up along the way (122 days since last workplace accident)

I also have a bunch of LED ropes, night lights, and our bedroom TV setup on smart plugs that are turned on and off automatically, but I don't know if that counts since I didn't build it, I just bought them.

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

#579

We (with the wife) automated menu for the week and the shopping list. A database store all recipes (ingredients, time taken...) and the menu composer chose semi-randomly* into the list. * : Menu composer takes into account : - in season vegetables, - number of reutilisation of the ingredient, - number of reutilisation of the meal, - expiration of the ingredients (vegetables can expire rather quickly) - various parame…

people would buy this.

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

#580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building a clunky device that imitates human actions is hardly 'genius'. Resourceful maybe. An electrical coffee grinder isn't a normal coffee grinder with some rotating lever attached to it. An electrical coffee grinder has small motors attached to the grinder mechanism in order to make it move. This contraption is fun to build I am sure, but not 'genius'. Much closer to genius is the thermomix: https://thermomix.co…

Here in Australia, Thermomix was recently ordered to pay $4.6 million in penalties for knowingly keeping safety issues relating to one of their appliances secret. A malfunctioning lid caused hot liquid to escape from the bowl, giving several consumers severe burns. The Court found that Thermomix knew of this risk but still continued to promote and supply the faulty product. Beware of genius inventions, you may get bu…

Sounds like the Cornballer http://arresteddevelopment.wikia.com/wiki/The_Cornballer
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