Hack-a-Day, Day 17: Android App

I made my first android app today. It was terrible and I plan to never do it again.

 wow! a real app on my phone--well okay, this is an emulator
wow! a real app on my phone--well okay, this is an emulator

It took me about three hours of trying to get the sample apps to run before I gave up and made something from scratch. Both involved heavy use of ChatGPT (not my usual flow).

 app icon
app icon

That said, if you want an app that reminds you how to tie your tie in an easy step-by-step way, you can download the APK from my website, and I believe you should be able to run that on your phone.

I don't know how to easily share Android source code, so I won't.

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Hack-a-Day, Day 14: Can't Stop

 can't stop won't stop
can't stop won't stop

Can't Stop is a push-your-luck style dice game designed by Sid Sackson in 1980. I've found it to be fun on BoardGameArena.

I wrote my own version for hack-a-day. You can play online. The source code is on github.

I'm pretty happy with this one. I didn't get to online play or even AI opponents, but you can play on your own or against friends in the room.

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Hack-a-Day, Day 13: Pixel Kitchen

Today I wrote a little game where you make food in a kitchen.

 can you make a sandwich?
can you make a sandwich?

You can play here. Source code is on github.

This was so-so. I didn't have a ton of fun making it, and it's not that fun to play either. I spent way too much time with things like trying to get sprites to load, and not as much on making the game fun. I think it could be much better with another day or two of work (as usual for hack-a-day).

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Hack-a-Day, Day 12: Whiteboard to-do list

Today I made a TODO list. It has whiteboard sections to write tasks in, an eraser, and a timer. You should be able to use it flat or on the wall, though it's a little bulky to use flat.

 the final whiteboard
the final whiteboard

The blue is mostly spray paint, with some hand acrylic painting near the tape. The various bits on top are held in place with magnets, which I epoxied.

The cost to make this was $17. $5 for the whiteboard marker, $5 for the MDF board, and $7 for the timer. The eraser I made for free. I already had paints, whiteboard tape, epoxy, and magnets.

 in-progress whiteboard. note some blue LEDs on the right
in-progress whiteboard. note some blue LEDs on the right

Originally I had planned to add a bunch of electronics (LEDs for which task is active, a built-in timer, a buzzer, etc), but I decided not to. I was way too ambitious, so I didn't think I'd have time. On top of that, I was having a rough time getting my microcontroller to work, or figuring out how to mount hardware cleanly on MDF. I don't think I would have been happy with the electronic version (even with enough time to do it well), and I am with this version. I'm glad I gave up on that part early. I don't think I'll attempt another physical electronics project during hack-a-day -- it's too hard with too little to show for it at my skill level.

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Home automation

I added some temperature sensors around my house.

 Temperature sensor, $4/ea on aliexpress
Temperature sensor, $4/ea on aliexpress

The sensors run on AAA battery, and periodically transmit the temperature on zigbee, a radio protocol in similar frequencies as Wifi. The signals get received by a USB dongle designed to receive and transmit zigbee.

 A raspberry pi listens to zigbee using a USB dongle
A raspberry pi listens to zigbee using a USB dongle

This is connected to a raspberry pi running zigbee2mqtt. The messages get sent to an mqtt broker via wifi. mqtt is a pub/sub protocol that runs over the internet. Any computer on my LAN can then be notified of temperature updates, by asking the mqtt broker to send them updates.

I wrote a small server which stays on all the time, listening to updates and recording changes to a database. It also generates reports periodically.

I think my database format is mildly interesting, in that it's designed to use a fixed amount of space. Anyone who wants to see the technical details, can check the github repo, specifically this file.

Temperatures can be seen in celsius or fahrenheit online. An example in Fahrenheit is below.

    Current Temperature
    last updated: 2024-11-07 8:34pm

    Sensor                        Temperature  Humidity    Last update
    Outside - Front                51.51°F      69.86%     1 minutes ago
    Outside - Back                 64.26°F      99.99%     22 hours, 49 min ago
    Upstairs - Dining Room         69.67°F      53.24%     0 minutes ago
    Upstairs - Bedroom - Za3k      71.35°F      60.15%     21 minutes ago
    Upstairs - Bedroom - Master    68.90°F      58.11%     4 minutes ago
    Upstairs - Kitchen             71.20°F      50.50%     6 minutes ago
    Upstairs - Garage              65.55°F      60.65%     2 minutes ago
    Basement - HVAC/Server         68.02°F      51.27%     3 minutes ago
    Basement - Workshop            67.10°F      52.91%     14 minutes ago

    -------------

    Hourly Temperature
    last updated: 2024-11-07 8:34pm

                    outside    inside     
    2024-11-07  8am    54.49°F    69.44°F   
    2024-11-07  9am    53.81°F    69.04°F   
    [...]
    2024-11-07  6pm    56.11°F    69.86°F   
    2024-11-07  7pm    53.53°F    69.65°F   

    -------------

    Historical highs and lows
    last updated: 2024-11-07 8:34pm

                outside             inside              
    2024-11-07    51.51 -  64.15°F    67.06 -  81.54°F   
    2024-11-06    61.21 -  71.24°F    68.36 -  81.18°F   
    [...]
    2024-10-10    49.39 -  60.89°F    67.59 -  77.49°F   

    -------------

    Code: https://github.com/za3k/temp-monitor

Having tested out zigbee and mqtt, I felt ready for my actual use case -- curtains. I live across the street from a major parking lot, and they have floodlights on all night. To sleep, I need blackout curtains. The problem is, it's pretty hard to wake up with blackout curtains drawn.

My solution was to get some smart curtains, and have them automatically go down at the end of the day, and go up in the morning.

 Smart curtains from IKEA
Smart curtains from IKEA

This worked fine, after I got the curtains set up. I've completely forgotten about them, which is exactly how I like my home automation--I want to never think about it. For more about how to set up IKEA smart curtains, see my notes. It comes with 6 manuals.

blinds controls my blinds via the computer, and mqtt2mqtt allows my IKEA remote to control them too. cron and heliocron automatically open and close the curtains on a timer.


I worked on monitoring power usage via my circuit breaker with current transformers and the circuitsetup ESP32 energy meter but it's currently stalled. The main problem is that I can't fit the CTs into my circuit breaker. If I get it working, I'll post an update.

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Hack-a-Day, Day 05: Milling an Aluminium Soma Cube (FAILED)

As on day 02, I tried to make a soma cube, this time milling it out of aluminium on a milling machine.

 The Soma Cube is a 3D, tetris-like puzzle -- picture credit 2ndlook.nl
The Soma Cube is a 3D, tetris-like puzzle -- picture credit 2ndlook.nl

I picked up some aluminium from a local supplier, and headed to Hive13, the local hackerspace, to use their milling machine.

 The Hive13 metal mill
The Hive13 metal mill

After about 7 hours, despite hard work, I had almost finished cutting the blanks, and that was it. Milling is no joke, especially for a beginner!

 correctly sized blanks to make the pieces
correctly sized blanks to make the pieces

And had to call it a night, both because I was tired and because the weekly meeting was starting. I was feeling pretty rough after this one -- three, nearly four failed projects in a row is not a great start to a hackathon.

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