What automation processes have you implemented that make your life easier?
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Original question by @[email protected]
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Original question by @[email protected]
Breathing
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Original question by @[email protected]
Scheduling bill payments through my banks online bill pay. I will pay bills with a credit card when I absolutely have to. I don't use ACH autodraft at all if I can avoid it. Online bill pay is usually free, it helps centralize all my bill payments, and if there's a problem I just call the bank instead of having to mess with the vendor.
It also helps make sure I don't forget to pay a bill, which my ADHD brain would do all the time otherwise.
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Original question by @[email protected]
::: spoiler I have my own scripts in Linux to launch tools and local host servers. These have non POSIX stuff like interactive launching and modifying history to make it easy to access more complex commands. I also have branching logic and readline setup to append in history, mostly so I do not need to remember how to do a C style incremental for loop in bash when I need it.
I suppose one might say etching circuit boards is a form of automation. I have a tote with both toner transfer and photolithography setups along with ferric chloride or hydrochloric acid enchants. I can also make solder masks from soda cans or other thin aluminum sheets using photolithography.
I might know a thing or two about FreeCAD and 3d printing.
My most ambitious semi related hardware project was a cat toy I never finished but was using microwave proximity sensors to trigger on movement, along with a few micro switches, to make an impossible kitty wack-a-mole. The sensors were not adequate for the task. I was using the type that is based on the infrared controller converted to work on radio. The more recent millimeter wave sensors are what I really needed, specifically the gesture trigger type would likely work. Noisy servos are also far too scary for kitties.
I've been mulling over ways of making an automated hacksaw.
On a layer below that, I would like to get into what is possible for creating precision from "scratch". Like 3d print a motorized holder to slowly spin two granite rocks with an abrasive slurry to see how flat I can make a reference. Then try some hand scraping of iron with Prussian blue.
I'm also curious if there is a real relationship in machining between rigidity, speed, and depth of cut. Like perhaps it is possible to 3d print a jig that uses a very small depth of cut with a more complex tool to achieve stuff typically reserved for a milling machine. Like what if a Shaper like motion was combined with a small steel wire spool where the wire tip passes across a series of abrasives and a leather strop to create an edge before the wire tip enters an induction coil to harden the surface, and finally taking a shallow cutting pass. I'm curious about what sources of cheap or recycled materials might work. This idea is also a curiosity about space exploration in the specific area of automated in-situ resource utilization but at a much oversimplified level of just using readily available stuff one might find at a hardware or thrift store. I'm curious about how a self replicating drone like concept could build up its own tooling to precision at an intermediate stage of accessible resources.
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Scheduling bill payments through my banks online bill pay. I will pay bills with a credit card when I absolutely have to. I don't use ACH autodraft at all if I can avoid it. Online bill pay is usually free, it helps centralize all my bill payments, and if there's a problem I just call the bank instead of having to mess with the vendor.
It also helps make sure I don't forget to pay a bill, which my ADHD brain would do all the time otherwise.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Automating bill payments had been such a huge change for my life - I was only sporadically able to maintain good habits but now everything just works. Minimal effort, maximum gainz!
But I’d also include
- tap-to-pay means I never have to carry cash, never have to pay exhorbitant atm fees, don’t even need to carry my wallet
- online payments - even people you’d normally expect to require cash, will now take Zelle or Venmo or PayPal. No cash needed. This winter I had neighborhood kids shovel driveways that took Venmo!
- Square. Yes, now we can even go to festivals or farmers markets without paying ridiculous fees for cash or the risk of carrying cash. My kids scout troop was an early adopter and for several years made huge donation money as one of the few booths to take credit card.
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Original question by @[email protected]
some discord bots on a private server, notify me whenever a paper in my scientific field is published.
have another one about whenever senator or a representative trades stock.
useful.
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Original question by @[email protected]
A few years back me and my dad set up a raspberry pi with a temperature probe to monitor the water temp in a local swimming hole, it reports the temperature every half hour and submits it to a private webpage.
Works really well
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Original question by @[email protected]
Monthly backups of containers and volumes, notifications of disruptions, rules for salary to send it to the right places. Arr stack saves a ton of time too
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A few years back me and my dad set up a raspberry pi with a temperature probe to monitor the water temp in a local swimming hole, it reports the temperature every half hour and submits it to a private webpage.
Works really well
That's a rad idea. How are you powering and communicating with it? When I hear "watering hole" I picture a secret swimming spot out in the woods somewhere.
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That's a rad idea. How are you powering and communicating with it? When I hear "watering hole" I picture a secret swimming spot out in the woods somewhere.
It run off of a 12v motorcycle battery, the whole thing is on a timer, every halfhour, the timer gives the pi power for two minutes, during those two minutes the pi boots up, and runs a bash script to collect and send the data, wait for one min and shutdown the pi.
The pi communicates over wifi with a friendly neighbouring house.
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It run off of a 12v motorcycle battery, the whole thing is on a timer, every halfhour, the timer gives the pi power for two minutes, during those two minutes the pi boots up, and runs a bash script to collect and send the data, wait for one min and shutdown the pi.
The pi communicates over wifi with a friendly neighbouring house.
Ingenious setup!
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Original question by @[email protected]
I've been playing Factorio with a friend. Our factory was getting large enough that him downloading the map and catching up was getting really slow (even though the factory itself wasn't that big). We ended up setting up a VPN which somehow made that process SIGNIFICANTLY faster. However, I really only wanted the VPN on while we were playing the game. So I ended up writing some automation to detect if I was no longer playing and the VPN was still active and then shut it off automatically. It's a small thing but I'm both proud of it and happy with the results.
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Original question by @[email protected]
Seriously, I haven’t automated anything. And life is just fine.
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Ingenious setup!
Some more details, the temperature probe is a DS18B20, it connects to the GPIO pins, and communicates over the 1-w protocol which is built into the pi, you get the data digitally in celsius, if it is a negative temperature it is a hassle to deal with so I just made it report 0 as default when it is too close.
The probe can error out, it then reports the temp as 85, since the water never actually gets that high in reality, I solved it by checking if the value returned from the probe is 85 before submitting it, if it is, it will take another measurement, check that for 85, if that is still 85, it will check one final time and then just submit the result, so far this has solved the issue.
Once the data is formated and ready, the pi makes an HTTP request, posting the data using curl, to a simple PHP/MySQL site I hacked together, where a page displays the current temp, a timestamp of when the temp was taken and a small graph showing changes to the temp over the last 24h
Planned improvements:
Use the status field that the pi reports to include wifi signal strength, as trees grows around the device it will reduce the signal strength meaning that measurements are lost, with the signal strength data we can check how bad it is and clear leaves ahead of the problem.
Considered improvements:
Security, as it stands right now, there is zero security to submit data to the database, anyone can just access the submit.php page and it will add an empty entry to the database, or if they figure out the syntax they can just post whatever data they want into the database. I would like to add a simple validation of a static random string that the pi sends along with the rest of the data. I am no real webdev, just an IT guy who hacked this together.
Power monitoring, it would be good to have an idea of of how well charged the battery is, it would require a separate module which would also require power, reducing the battery life as it is. Currently the battery lasts a few months and we have a manual schedule to replace it, it is not a huge problem, but it would be nice to have the data.
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Ingenious setup!
I forgot about three more technical aspects of the device...
The bash script it set up to run as a service in systemd, this is to make it run on startup and have some control over it, this is important for the next part.
The one min delay after submitting the data and shutting down the pi, this gives me time to find the command to stop the script before the script shuts down the pi, this is important so you can access the system and service it.
Why shut it down at all, the power will be cut shortly after?
This is to preserve the filesystem and reduce the risk of corruption, consider that the pi will turn on and off 24 times every day, any error caused by improper shutdowns will quickly amplify.
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Original question by @[email protected]
Copied from the original post:
I'm a big fan of automating as much as I can.
- Lights automatically turn on when someone enters the room, but only if it's dark enough to need lights in that room at that moment. Turn them off automatically when presence is no longer detected (not just IR based motion detection).
- My old washer and dryer alert me when they're done thanks to vibration sensors.
- Media downloads when added to a watchlist.
- Regular backups locally and to the cloud.
- My phone enables/disables rotation lock based on the app I'm currently using.
- Phone also opens various playlists when connecting to my car stereo based on date/time.
- Various "scenes" to turn devices on and off, control brightness, volume levels, etc. This includes controlling devices that are IR, RF, Bluetooth, and Zigbee based.
- Game servers that update when new versions are released, but only when no players are connected. If anyone is connected, sends a message to a discord server (that is also connected to Matrix) alerting everyone to the available update and asking players to log off at their earliest convenience. Players can also check on game server status with bot commands in the game's channel on that server.
Everything runs locally and has a manual backup so I can still control everything the old fashioned way if my phone is dead or if my non tech savvy parents are over and need to operate any of it.
