Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

Re:Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mu... by kryptn on Monday February 17, 2020 @12:40AM (#22345829)

Oh cool, I didn't know if others were doing this. I've recently just started going down this path with some zero effort IFTTT triggers but I'm not happy with how infrequent they seem to trigger. My next step is to build my own set of listeners/scrapers.

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Re:Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mu... by bluehatbrit on Monday February 17, 2020 @08:13AM (#22347412)

I posted the same thing on a similar thread yesterday but if you're looking to build some scrapers and listeners and make it easy for yourself I'd highly recommend Huginn (https://github.com/huginn/huginn). I set it up a few months back and I've been using it to scrape all sorts of info and alert me on things. IE:

* A change in GBP -> NOK exchange rate, to indicate if it's a good time to buy ready for my next trip to Norway.

* Alerts on flight prices to help me purchase flights when they're at their cheapest.

* Daily digest email with content I'm interested in from HN and some web comics.

* A summary of new content coming into my RSS reader.

It works really well for this sort of stuff and I found it fairly easy to get up and running.

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Re:Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mu... by mark_l_watson on Monday February 17, 2020 @09:34AM (#22347928)

Thanks for the link! huginn looks cool and useful (good combination!). Impressive work by 179 contributors.

I have had numerous simpler projects automating my digital life but I made the (probable) mistake of always starting from scratch and writing stuff all on my own.

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Re:Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mu... by bluehatbrit on Monday February 17, 2020 @11:11AM (#22348649)

I was in a similar boat but refused to build my own system. Huginn was a perfect solution for me and I really enjoy using it. You can write your own agents if you need to but I haven't had to so far.

Since I set it up a few months ago I've been using it a bunch, it's event driven system is great for when you want to trigger off multiple streams half way through a flow. You can also go back through past events if you want which is really powerful.

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Re:Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mu... by iKlsR on Monday February 17, 2020 @09:16AM (#22347810)

I found this last night and I'm already looking at replacing/extending my existing setup with it. Thanks for the share!

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Re:Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mu... by bluehatbrit on Monday February 17, 2020 @11:13AM (#22348661)

Nice! It didn't take me too long to setup with docker-compose on a cheap Digital Ocean instance. I'd suggest reading through all the options and toggles provided by environment variables though. There were quite a few I didn't find for a few weeks which proved to be important or useful and they're not explained in the docs all that well. Aside from that, I've not had any teething issues really.

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Re:Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mu... by iKlsR on Monday February 17, 2020 @09:35AM (#22347935)

I found https://www.scrapingbee.com/ the other day. Checkout their blog as well, filled with useful stuff.

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