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1901 points l2silver | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | 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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mindcrime ◴[] No.35747665[source]
This thread is giving me a complex. Why? Well, because the answer is basically "nothing". I mean, don't get me wrong - I've built all sorts of stuff, and plenty of it was not for my $DAYJOB. And I think (at times) of myself as being fairly creative and having lots of "ideas". And yet... at least in the context of this thread (the way I'm interpreting the OP's question anyway) I just don't have much to offer up.

FWIW, I interpret the question as being strictly about stuff one built for oneself in the context of everyday, day-in, day-out life. Stuff to use yourself. And on that front, I just realized I almost never build anything strictly for myself. I work on Open Source projects and work on projects at Fogbeam that I (want|hope|expect|whatever) other people to use, or things I would use myself in a business context. But I just don't build handy little gadgets to use around the house, or in my truck, or when out and about.

This may be one of the first times I've really felt a strong case of the "imposter syndrome" that one hears so much about. I feel like I should have some answers for this, so why don't I? :-(

OK, to be fair, I did built at least one thing just for myself. I have a couple of lamps that are positioned in an out of the way location in my living room, and I hate having to walk to them and stretch to reach the switch(es). So I did the whole "IP controlled lamp" thing with a relay and an Arduino Nano 33 IoT board. The power strip the lamps are plugged into is controlled by the relay, and I can send an HTTP request to turn the relay on or off. I created a shortcut on my phone's homescreen so I can easily control it from my phone. But that's such a chintzy project I almost feel worse for admitting to it. :p

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fuzzfactor ◴[] No.35752969[source]
>I (want|hope|expect|whatever) other people to use, or things I would use myself in a business context.

I can admire this right here.

As a priority if you do try to solve problems that you and others share in some way, this has got to be the path toward potentially most widespread utility.

Regardless of whether you are actually on that path, which can be a more elusive yellow brick road than the problems you are skilled at solving.

No matter how cool it is there are probably some things that nobody else ends up using anyway.

There you go, you built it and it turned out to be just for yourself :)

Without any details I respect that as much as the amazing non-business context accomplishments in this topic.

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1. mindcrime ◴[] No.35772956[source]
No matter how cool it is there are probably some things that nobody else ends up using anyway. ... There you go, you built it and it turned out to be just for yourself :)

Excellent point! It is true for most of the things I build, even though the intent is for the "thing" to see use by others, that the inception was a case of "scratching my own itch." And yes, even if the thing "fails" as something in the global marketplace, I still have the result to continue using for my own itch. :-)