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

1901 points l2silver | 1 comments | 27 Apr 23 15:04 UTC | HN request time: 1.062s | 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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1. l2silver ◴[28 Apr 23 23:11 UTC] No.35748317[source]▶
If you think racoons are cool, you're definitely not from Toronto.