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

1901 points l2silver | 2 comments | 27 Apr 23 15:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.464s | 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. rootw0rm ◴[29 Apr 23 03:52 UTC] No.35749864[source]▶
12 years ago my wife had 4 strokes, barely lived, was in a coma, etc.

After lots of rehab she came home, but was paralyzed on left side, couldn't speak, couldn't hold a pen to write. Our communication technique was having her point to letters or phrases on a piece of paper.

I wrote a typing program back then that would accept as input any USB joystick for selecting letters/phrases and then text to speech on button press. Not terribly complicated, but also better than anything I could find at the time.

replies(1): >>35750160 #
2. cdaringe ◴[29 Apr 23 04:56 UTC] No.35750160[source]▶
I had a family member who couldn’t speak, but could cognitively process, and it was palpably frustrating for them. I wish I thought of something clever like that. Really curious if you ever updated your system?