Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?

Re:Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal ... by maxmunzel on Thursday April 14, 2022 @02:58AM (#31024099)

After a quick burst of manic energy during exam phase, I decided to solve the pigeon problem on my balcony once and for all (and in a humane way).

So I bought a cheap electric water gun from Amazon, built in WiFi using an ESP8266 and a relay shield; 3D printed a window mount for my old iPhone (running a webcam app) and hacked together some openCV code in python.

After all this was working on my desk, I had the pleasure to discover that the PCB Antenna of the ESP is to weak to receive WiFi on my balcony so I connected the ESP to my (current) iPhone hotspot and wrote a small go relay for my server so that my laptop can send the shooting commands to the water gun ~~over the internet~~. Oh and while I was at it, I added a Siri Shortcut, so it’s voice controllable, too. (They are surprisingly hacker-friendly)

The surprising thing is, that this Ruben Goldberg machine actually works really well and without much fiddling.

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Re:Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal ... by jwilk on Thursday April 14, 2022 @04:39AM (#31024583)

Can you publish more details of your setup and the code?

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Re:Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal ... by Theory42 on Saturday April 16, 2022 @06:20PM (#31056589)

Does this allow you to shoot the water gun, or is it recognizing pigeons in an automated way and firing?

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Re:Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal ... by sprobertson on Saturday April 16, 2022 @11:45PM (#31058291)

I'd guess the latter if there's an OpenCV component

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Re:Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal ... by MockObject on Thursday April 14, 2022 @11:09AM (#31027952)

This sounds really amazing. I'd love to read more about this!

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