sevennull

Thanks for sharing - i have been on a few years long journey trying to control my swamp cooler while try to learn RF. I started with a flipper zero to see if i could even capture signals from remote, replay and then decode via URH. i was able to brute force my way through it with older AI models 'back in the day'. I had it basically just send a 'cool' signal while remote was set to vent (which means no water flow).

The humidity in the house could then be measured with a RH sensor and the controller could then send cool signal to add some water to the pads if RH dropped below a certain point. This keeps the humidity way down while only increasing temp by 1-2 degrees. So much more comfortable as i can now keep the RH in the 50-60% range base on outside conditions.

I recently picked the project back up and with newer Claude models i have been making significant progress. For one, the code to determine when to 'cool' is getting better at managing as outside conditions change - temp/RH etc outside impacts cooler performance. Second, I can now start to fully replace the remote so the code manages via feedback loop. the remote has a keep alive sync signal that i was able to figure out that prevented me from using just the eps32. if the remote was off, the controller would turn on the cooler fine but if i didnt send a keep alive, the cooler eventually shuts off.

I have also added a RX module that allows me to now listen for the remote signal and shut off controller when i turn off via remote. eg turn on cooler via remote and controller can be turned on/off to work its magic.

Ultimate goal is to maintain the RH in house all day while outside conditions vary - morning, afternoon, evening and storms etc and then turn off at night once certain conditions are met. My wifes request is to have it turn off at bedtime so she can fall asleep, then turn back on after about 1 hour - so a timer is future feature.

The one thing I have learned is RF is hard but satisfying to figure out - I would have never attempted learning this w/o Claude. I also have a meter reader esp32 i am still working to debug and feel confident i can figure it out.

nice - i wanted a gcode creator for pen plotter. so easy to draw labels now on tape.

replaced some paid apps with local - google reader rss replacement and send web to kindle.

most ambitious was browser extension to automate booking reservations since captcha and timing were critical.

swamp/evaporative cooler controller that monitors rate of change of relative humidity and sends RF signal to cooler to turn water on for x seconds to keep humidity lower than just leaving set to cool all the time. Does a great job but need to work on edge cases and ultimately replacing remote with my controller.

financial models for retirement planning

pen plotter gcode creator for old 3d printer to make labels.

food monitor to track what i ate with AI analysis based on symptoms recorded as well as interactive follow up questions

inventory app for electronic parts that now is inventory for all kinds of stuff like tools/plumbing etc that uses photo/ai to fill in data.

well?

Sweat spot

OMG, shorts are broken - 1x speed feels like .25x speed. FIX that sheot, let me set default 2x on everything

welders saw this happen... everyone went into welding because of great salary due to demand. Now there are too many welders or jobs went away (oil fields etc)

Intermittent fasting + eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper worked miracles for me.

Haha, EDI is such a pita. very efficient for machines I suspect - the first time they tried to take over.

F PE

yeah it sucks they were sold. I have been super happy with 2 carbon x for almost 2 decades.

yeah someone needs to vibe code all the adobe products ;)

gd, right up there with the best of them. Congrats

they will just start shipping windows with a thermonuclear core to generate power.

does it work with wife or just kids?

Ah another nice feature would be blank out game until you hit start and cant reset timer. I like to compete with friends and resetting time makes it so you cant compete.

Like the game. for no place king X the ux would be faster for me if i could draw a line where no kings can go.

Bradbury Science Museum, las alamos, nm. worth a visit - neat area and history.

Los Alamos National Laboratory (.gov) https://www.lanl.gov › engage › bradbury As Los Alamos National Laboratory's official museum, the Bradbury Science Museum helps visitors learn about the Lab's beginnings during the Manhattan Project.

cool idea. not seeing all tiles available at once is kinda pita as it makes it harder to come up with word choices.

Funny, i created an extension that does does something similar. I wanted to watch specific products at a grocery store that go on sale and look for the pattern. It opens page that has been flagged to watch and extracts data and then charts results for various things i want to track. It was more of a POC which has lead to some other data scraping apps i wanted. I am not a developer but know enough having worked around tech for awhile i can usually figure something out. claude has been amazing for me, especially since i can ask questions about its code/logic and learn as we go.

Love Norway but has seemed very expensive the 2 times we have visited my brother-in-law.

How do you manage?

I have changed my "career" several times and luck played a big role.

Short answer - work for a small startup where you wear many hats. Scale, sell or fail - rinse and repeat.

Started as a mechanic, went back to get an engineering degree which got me into a auto manufacture. I found engineering cool but moved to slow and salary growth was very slow. During dot com days things were booming and I had an opportunity to jump to a marketing startup which helped me break out of my engineering shell(such a different world).

I found operations was a very good fit for me - complex machine you have to engineer to work efficiently as the world is on fire. I happen to make a career out of it working with several startups in numerous industries. My job was always started with - fixing stuff young startups get wrong to help them keep up with growth. Basically put business processes in place and be an interpreter between technical and business people so they stop making stupid technical decision that cause long term problems.

It was a great ride and learned a ton about business that you will rarely learn at a big company. I was responsible for various aspects of technical and non technical operations so always had a seat at the table.

The big hole - I basically have learned the fun bits of STEM(3d Printing, Laser cutting, CNC, microcontrollers/electronics etc) over the last few years. I graduated with a ME degree 25 years ago but left engineering shortly after to go into the startup world. Built a career out of helping scale startups and now decided to retire and focus on my interest as I never had time or energy.

My current rabbit hole is tuning my home's boiler to be more efficient in its use of gas. It is an interesting engineering problem because the lack of feedback loop since the thermostat is dumb and specific home variables makes smart thermostats useless as well as boiler sizing more complex than most installers understand. My goal is to add some features specific to my home to reduce gas consumption based on more variables - outside temp, minimum outside temp, sun/clouds and home variables like brick wall temp, fireplace heat, boiler controller settings as well as the wifes 'I'm cold' variable.

I am using a microcontroller and custom current switch as well as IOTSTACK to send inlet/outlet temp and gas valve & circulator state (on/off) to influxdb/grafana so I can see what is happening between thermostat and boiler controller. I have identified a few freebies in terms of consumption and inefficiencies. I have added a relay to delay the gas valve once the boiler starts cycling to reduce "short cycling" which is a waste of gas on startup and a mini explosion every time gas lights. I have managed to reduce cycles in half which helps with wear and tear as well as the number of boom sounds coming from my boiler room :)

I would love to go down the simulink rabbit hole but I think I will not.

interesting, why did you loose motivation?

I saw my grandparents go through 10 years of doing all the retirement things(beach, hobbies, social hour etc) to keep them more than busy. Then they kind of did it all and just started having social hour earlier and earlier every year into their 80s. Cocktail our started about 11:30 am in the end.

I'm starting my retirement and have so many interest/subjects I want to learn so feel like I can stay pretty entertained for more than 10 years but maybe not.