
Ask HN: How did you hack your home? - selmat
Do you have any DIY hacks you have made in your home?<p>Any usefull or just interesting project with rpy, arduino, custom atmel and other diy platform count.
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ocdtrekkie
Oddly, my favorite is an LED strip in my bathroom. It's very subtly animated,
but the point is, it's red. Whenever I wake up at night, and need to go to the
bathroom, I turn it on instead of the overhead light so it doesn't hurt my
eyes. :)

Easily my dumbest thing by by far the most appreciated.

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TDettmering
In the pre-Smartphone era (not really, but I didn't buy one back then), I
built a printer that would output a daily report every morning that I could
just take with me:

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/sfg/albums/72157623026358605](https://www.flickr.com/photos/sfg/albums/72157623026358605)

I used an old POS printer from eBay and an Arduino with an Ethernet shield. It
was a fun thing, but was made obsolete by smartphones.

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richerlariviere
I love your project. Bridging virtual and material component is so satisfying
:).

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quickthrower2
I got a sheet of tarp* under the verandah to prevent water leaking through to
the garage.

Pulled off the door handles that were broken. Gone handleless - you have to
stick your hand under the gap at the bottom to open if it is too stuck.

Covered the couch in plastic liner to prevent spills.

Used a spare council collection bin as a compost heap.

*As in Tarpaulin, not a bailout. This one prevents a literal bailout.

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Samon
I've built a few raspberry pi based home automation systems, from relays
switching my garden lights and irrigation, to 3D printed brackets and pulleys
to convert my manual curtain tracks to motorised ones, WiFi controlled power
sockets to switch lamps, and even a full aquarium control system managing the
lighting (colour temperature and brightness), filter and aeration, and heater.
I'm currently using NodeRED to build the logic and provide a web interface.

~~~
richerlariviere
The aquarium project is nice! Is your project open source?

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wowca
Created an automated chicken coop door which opens/closes the door based on
sunlight.

It consists of:

    
    
      1. Chicken coop  
      2. Old wiper motor to drive the door up/down (the door is suspended on fishing line)  
      3. Arduino Nano  
      4. Motor control shield  
      5. Light sensor  
      6. 2 mechanical switches for the door positions (stop the motor if switch is pressed)  
      7. Old car battery  
      8. 3 chinese 12V 15W solar panels

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jxub
Divorced my wife. After that, my Arduino experiments feel pretty limited in
impact on my household.

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quickthrower2
The title says "hack" not "lose"

~~~
jxub
She's a lawyer so I got a decent alimony tho

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bryan11
Added waterproof liner under kitchen and bathroom sinks so water leaks don't
damage cabinets. Also added battery powered water leak alarms.

Got tired of carrying laundry downstairs, so I changed one bathroom cabinet
drawer into a laundry chute.

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hemantv
Maybe not something I made explicitly. But here are few things 1\. A keyless
lock. 2\. Automatic garage door opener 3\. An occupancy sensor in my work with
timer of 20 minutes 4\. Google home for everything else.

