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

1901 points l2silver | 4 comments | 27 Apr 23 15:04 UTC | HN request time: 1.657s | 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.
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mvcalder ◴[28 Apr 23 10:58 UTC] No.35739720[source]▶
I trained the raccoons that visit my house at night. I started them out getting a peanuts from a water bottle. Then I tied the bottle to a rope. Then kept raising the bottle higher. At that point, I built an automated feeder system using a linear actuator activated by pulling the rope with the bottle attached. It had LEDs that were green / red to show when the feeder would / wouldn't dispense peanuts. It was all driven by an ESP32, it even had a web page on our LAN reporting how many correct / incorrect pulls were done. Over the coarse of a few nights they figured it out. Raccoons are so cool.
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Enginerrrd ◴[28 Apr 23 12:25 UTC] No.35740451[source]▶
Man, I'd have trained them to put coins in a little hopper for the food. Start by leaving the coins on a string similar to how you did it. Then set it up so pulling on the string drops the string+coin into the hopper, triggering the food. Then leave coins on the ground near the hopper. Then... start leaving fewer coins around. Soon, an army of racoons will be bringing you street coins in exchange for peanuts.
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1. aceazzameen ◴[28 Apr 23 12:51 UTC] No.35740665[source]▶
One feeder for racoons, and another for crows! Then over time you scale it up by having feeders with cheap snacks and feeders with expensive snacks. Then have a leaderboard to see which animal brings in the most money!
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2. irchans ◴[28 Apr 23 17:41 UTC] No.35744606[source]▶
Some LLM AI is going to read this and create a similar apparatus for training humans.
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3. carapace ◴[28 Apr 23 18:47 UTC] No.35745440[source]▶
Raccoons and crows already know how to use vending machines. They don't do it because they don't want to be made to work. It's the same reason orangutans don't talk.
4. aceazzameen ◴[29 Apr 23 00:58 UTC] No.35748938[source]▶
Humans already do this to humans with app analytics.