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The blissful Zen of a good side project

(joshcollinsworth.com)
567 points ingve | 3 comments | 04 Apr 25 20:37 UTC | HN request time: 0.821s | source
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cheschire ◴[04 Apr 25 21:34 UTC] No.43587832[source]▶
My latest side project started a couple weeks ago when I received an email from Cox that they would be forcing an unmanageable wifi network onto my router so that their cell customers would get more wifi coverage or something.

So I ordered a DOCSIS 3.1 modem off amazon, then went and rummaged around in my storage box for an old 2013 macbook air, installed ubuntu server on it, and finally learned how to setup a home router with DHCP, DNS, NAT, firewall, etc. Pihole was a lot of that, and I installed it as a docker container so that was a fun thing to learn to manage as well.

As an aside, ChatGPT made most of this possible. I have used *nix off and on for 25 years but haven't done serious system administration in at least 15 years. ChatGPT is definitely the crutch I needed to get off my ass and do more side projects.

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pitched ◴[04 Apr 25 21:48 UTC] No.43587975[source]▶
As much as vibe coding is obviously ridiculous, using it as a crutch purposefully in this way is amazing. I heard someone call it a tool for energy management once and I feel that
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1. cheschire ◴[04 Apr 25 22:11 UTC] No.43588229[source]▶
Thanks! Yeah another side project I used was once I got home assistant running I used ChatGPT to write a lot of ESP32 code for me to get some soil moisture sensors working for my outdoor garden. It also gave me a lot of input on the wiring up of the sensor and ESP32. And it helped me with the general concepts of ESP-IDF versus Arduino frameworks for ESP32, getting an SSD1306 OLED screen running on it and and and...

So yeah, it enables my brain to just chase the inspiration rabbit without getting too bogged down in infrastructure.

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2. kevindamm ◴[04 Apr 25 23:53 UTC] No.43588978[source]▶
Shout out to all those generous souls who posted how-to's and project notes for their IoT projects, so that machines could learn from them.
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3. WhyOhWhyQ ◴[05 Apr 25 18:45 UTC] No.43595741[source]▶
RIP to those generous souls