

Ask HN: What is a project I can complete in a night? - newaccountfool

I have 8 hours to kill, and I can&#x27;t work on any of my other code. I would like to be somewhat productive and build something. I know there is lots of &#x27;weekend coding projects&#x27; but is there anything that you can attempt to build in a night?
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DanBC
A simple game for smart phones.

Draw a pipe on the screen. First pipe is short and straight. They get longer
and have more curves. "Drop" a ball into the pipe. The user tilts their phone
clockwise or anti-clockwise to guide the ball through the pipe. That tilting
is the only control the user has. Each pipe should be short enough to create
the "I nearly did that; just one more go" effect.

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HarshaThota
You could try contributing to some open source projects instead.

[http://up-for-grabs.net/](http://up-for-grabs.net/) has a list of projects
with issues/tasks that are easy for new contributors to pick up.

~~~
bennyg
That would be such an awesome site if practically everything wasn't on a
Microsoft platform. I'd love to contribute towards some Objective-C but
everything I see is .NET/F#

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msantos
A Raspberry Pi with motion detection and SMS.

I've built one using an old nokia that supports AT commands.

Pretty fun stuff and no soldering required. Next up I'll try adding a camera
and send MMS messages through the mobile phone with photos when motion is
detected.

Helpful links:

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Emgreat-Detecting-Pyroelectric-HC-
SR...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Emgreat-Detecting-Pyroelectric-HC-
SR501-Arduino/dp/B00EDHGMEY/)

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pyroelectric-Infrared-Motion-
Sensor-...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pyroelectric-Infrared-Motion-Sensor-
Detector/dp/B008AESDSY/)

[http://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2013/01/cheap-pir-
sensors-a...](http://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2013/01/cheap-pir-sensors-and-
the-raspberry-pi-part-1/)

[http://www.adafruit.com/products/189](http://www.adafruit.com/products/189)

[https://www.modmypi.com/blog/raspberry-pi-gpio-sensing-
motio...](https://www.modmypi.com/blog/raspberry-pi-gpio-sensing-motion-
detection)

[http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/13334/how-
can...](http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/13334/how-can-i-use-my-
raspberry-pi-for-motion-detection-and-sms)

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collyw
Something that doesn't involve much user interface.

I have been working an a side project recently. The guts of the code is very
simple and done already. Getting all the surrounding framework to serve it up
as a web page and do input validation is taking forever (mainly because I only
get an hour or two at a time to work on it). Its all the "polish" that takes
the time. So something command line based would be easier.

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sejje
URL shortener

Flickr creative commons image search engine

Twitter bot

Quote scraper

Deal alerter for craigslist

IFTTT on a scale relevant to you

~~~
newaccountfool
Twitter Bot sounds good, like that Idea. Really like the idea of automation.

~~~
sejje
They're not allowed and if it's detectable as a bot it'll get shut down.

But they're still fun.

~~~
marvy
Actually they are allowed.

[https://support.twitter.com/articles/76915#](https://support.twitter.com/articles/76915#)

~~~
sejje
Good call.

My bots have always been @reply bots, hence my confusion.

In particular, I was doing stuff like this: "For example, sending automated
@replies based on keyword searches is not permitted."

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iroot
If you are interested in mathematics and algorithms, you can solve Project
Euler problems projecteuler.net/problems

~~~
newaccountfool
Yeah was thinking of that, there's currently an Algorithms Course on Coursera
so might have a look at that.

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skazka16
"Yo" app :) It took 8 hours to build it. Then someone invested $1M. I don't
get the world.

~~~
yopeoplefinder
[http://yopeoplefinder.appspot.com](http://yopeoplefinder.appspot.com) took 1
hour to build...

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dllthomas
I'll second the "find a bug to fix". There are a lot of projects out there
that are welcoming to newbies.

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S4M
If you are using emacs, you can try to write some ELisp code to fix something
you don't like or automate something you do often.

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clark-kent
Try learning and hacking on some new technology you are not familiar with.

