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Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

1901 points l2silver | 3 comments | 27 Apr 23 15:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.622s | source

Maybe you've created your own AR program for wearables that shows the definition of a word when you highlight it IRL, or you've built a personal calendar app for your family to display on a monitor in the kitchen. Whatever it is, I'd love to hear it.
1. MrGilbert ◴[28 Apr 23 09:12 UTC] No.35739100[source]▶
I built my own lay man's digital signage solution.

I wanted to have a display in my living room, which shows the temperature of all rooms in my apartment. So I used an Android Picture Frame. This is connected via WIFI, and offers FTP access.

A Docker service on my local in-house server grabs a random background image from a folder. Depending if we have day or night time, the picture will show satellite images from earth’s day or night view.

It then connects to my home assistant instance, and pulls all the necessary values. A SVG template is then filled with these values, and they are merged with the background image. The service then uploads the image to the picture frame, and it will refresh the image after some minutes.

The whole thing uses templates and config files, so it's easy to extend.

Unfortunately, the picture frame broke down since, and I haven’t had the chance to buy another one yet.

replies(1): >>35739151 #
2. daniel-s ◴[28 Apr 23 09:20 UTC] No.35739151[source]▶
I this similar to some of the smart mirror projects that exist?
replies(1): >>35739323 #
3. MrGilbert ◴[28 Apr 23 09:51 UTC] No.35739323[source]▶
Somehow, yes. Except for the mirror part. :)

In theory, the tool is extensible. The first version used an e-Ink display, which of course requires a different way of communicating. So the docker service can upload either to a FTP, or can communicate via REST at the moment. I really only implemented what I needed at that time.