For years I've wanted to dive into building little devices with Arduino, but I've never gotten around to it.
In the meantime, however, I've done a few IT projects that have automated various things. Moving ones and zeroes around is not nearly as cool when you aren't using them to move a robot arm or make some lights turn on and off, but it's still pretty fun to make computers do things that spare me from doing tedious jobs.
Most of the automation I've done so far has been for work, to make my and other people's jobs easier. Most boring IT shit happens at work, after all. However, we've had some first world problems at home that needed to be solved: I made a TV series downloader to use on our streaming subscription, and I've got my sights set on automating some of our household bookkeeping chores. I am pretty sure that some of the problems I've sold could have been solved by buying some off-the-shelf gadget or app, but where's the fun in that?
The actual toolset required to create these tools is pretty basic. I basically just use Python and its various libraries. I just have to design the app's functionality and write a bit of code that expresses that functionality. Most of the heavy lifting is done by the Python libraries and web services that I use.
However, I don't like the fact that I'm working in a purely virtual environment. I can interact with a PC, server, or other internet-connected device, but that's it. I can't collect raw sensory data from the world or make a physical change to the world. I want to be able to make things that do chores (or cool shit) outside of a computer network. I am sure that there is a ton of things that could be made at home with a fairly small toolset. I just don't think about the problem often enough.
In the meantime, however, I've done a few IT projects that have automated various things. Moving ones and zeroes around is not nearly as cool when you aren't using them to move a robot arm or make some lights turn on and off, but it's still pretty fun to make computers do things that spare me from doing tedious jobs.
Most of the automation I've done so far has been for work, to make my and other people's jobs easier. Most boring IT shit happens at work, after all. However, we've had some first world problems at home that needed to be solved: I made a TV series downloader to use on our streaming subscription, and I've got my sights set on automating some of our household bookkeeping chores. I am pretty sure that some of the problems I've sold could have been solved by buying some off-the-shelf gadget or app, but where's the fun in that?
The actual toolset required to create these tools is pretty basic. I basically just use Python and its various libraries. I just have to design the app's functionality and write a bit of code that expresses that functionality. Most of the heavy lifting is done by the Python libraries and web services that I use.
However, I don't like the fact that I'm working in a purely virtual environment. I can interact with a PC, server, or other internet-connected device, but that's it. I can't collect raw sensory data from the world or make a physical change to the world. I want to be able to make things that do chores (or cool shit) outside of a computer network. I am sure that there is a ton of things that could be made at home with a fairly small toolset. I just don't think about the problem often enough.