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1. IFTTT turns off all of my Hue lights at sunrise (task: turn off forgotten lights)

2. At one point last year, I felt that my mornings were getting slower and slower (causing me to leave later), so I set up a Dash button where I hang my keys. When I left for work, I'd press the button, and the script would log the time to a Sparkfun data feed. After a month, I reviewed it to see just how bad it was (pretty bad). (task: life tracking I didn't have the brainpower for in the morning)

3. The worst part about D&D is keeping track of all the little variables and math, and none of the character sheets are any good (or if they are, they have 1 or 2 glaring problems, like only allowing 3 classes), so I wrote my own. Uses KnockoutJS to update all the little formulas that change every time you level up or gain skill points, etc. Here it is, though it's not exactly polished for public consumption: https://github.com/imnotpete/character-builder (task: fiddly math when I'm trying to have fun)

4. More IFTTT -- if my Roost fire alarm battery detects an alarm, I should receive an email and all my Hue lights will turn on. Unfortunately, the whole Roost process is slow enough that I just get confused when all my lights turn on 5 minutes after I burn the pizza. (task: turn on the lights so I can see to put out a midnight fire or escape my burning house)



Have you tried Roll20 for D&D? We used it for our group here at work as it allowed a remote team member to play. Even if you don't use all of it, the character sheet tools and info are pretty solid (albeit missing some things like certain spells).


I looked into it before I started coding, but it seemed the 3.5 support was pretty slim, at least for the character sheets.


I got an email about how to do the dash button thing, so I figured I'd post my response here as well. I use this project: https://github.com/hortinstein/node-dash-button

Here's how it works:

1. Figure out the dash button's mac address by network sniffing

2. Set up the dash partially, so it tries to make an order (but don't specify in your account exactly what to order, so it never completes)

3. Sniff the network for that mac address, and run an arbitrary script when you see it (this is the actual action, like my data logging)

4. For good measure, block outgoing requests from that address in your firewall

It's not 100% reliable, but it's still pretty useful.


The Hue Bridge can do #1 on its own, but I don't think it's exposed with the stock app. You can set up a sunrise/sunset trigger based on your geographical location - I use this to turn my outside lights on and off.


I'll have to dig into that. Is it one of the Labs plugins? I certainly don't mind cutting out extra services where I can.


I did it manually, using the debug web page[0] on the bridge to set up the "light sensor"[1], which is really a calculation of sunrise and sunset based on your location.

It takes a few hoops to get the bridge to generate a username and craft the appropriate JSON to set everything up, but Philips has really good documentation on this.

[0] https://developers.meethue.com/documentation/getting-started

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26782957/how-to-use-suns...


You could do number 2 completely automated with just the IFTTT mobile app. I used to track the time when I arrived and left the office on a gApps spreadsheet but later disabled the task due to battery draining (old iPhone 5).


I recently got three lifx lights and they are bright enough to light my entire room.

Simply having them turn on at sunset is awesome. Such a small but great convenience.




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