The AI cleaned up my kid's transcript and the upload went through
His kid's transcript was not going through, so as a last try he asked the AI to make a cleaner version of it. The cleaned version uploaded fine.
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Your place, your car and your pets · 265 ideasThe AI designed his fan controller circuit, board, and software. The boards are ordered and still untested.
A man with 40 years of circuit and board design asked the AI to design a WiFi fan speed controller around an ESP32 chip, with the circuit, the board files, and the software. The first design took about 15 or 20 minutes. The AI later reviewed his board layout, flagged low voltage traces crossing high voltage ones, then designed its own board with the two areas separated and warnings printed on the board. He bought the parts himself. The boards are on their way and have not been powered up yet.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI turned open map data into his car's format, a months-long job done in a week
The AI took about a week with light steering to convert OpenStreetMap data into his car's map format, a project that would have taken him months to a year, and he now pulls fresh maps that work on the car.
The AI built his whole home server setup from voice messages on Telegram
Working from a machine an agent had never run well, the AI set up his home server stack over Telegram voice messages: SSH, Docker, Traefik, certificates, split horizon DNS and local models. It also runs his house watching through Frigate and a solar dashboard he can check from his phone.
I fixed my 15 year old dryer with AI on my phone
His 15 year old dryer broke on Saturday. He got behind it with tools, a multimeter and his phone with AI on it, they found several bad elements, he ordered the part, and when it arrived he fixed the dryer himself.
The AI fixed my faulty hardware while I was at dinner
His new hardware device was faulty and the community had spent days looking for a fix that did not need a replacement. He plugged it into his computer, asked the AI to fix it, went to dinner, and came back to find it fixed.
Find a U-Haul lot that actually has a truck for my move
A Scientific American journalist spending a week with AI (Mark) and OpenAI's Dots (Sam) needed a moving truck. Her own search found no 10-foot trucks at the nearby U-Haul lot. Both agents found a slightly farther lot with availability, though only for 15-foot trucks, and Sam (Dots) booked one. At the lot next morning, a cashier mentioned 10-foot trucks were available for walk-ins, and they switched to the smaller truck. (Cross-agent event; the booking was executed by Dots.)
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Check my builder's paperwork against my grant requirements
The writer is applying for a lead pipe replacement grant. His dot read an email from his builder and told him it did not meet the requirements for the grant he is applying for, flagging the gap before it cost him the application.
The AI worked out which IKEA furniture would fill the empty space in my room
He fed the furniture he already owns into a Blender model of his room through an MCP link. The AI worked out what other IKEA furniture would fill most of the empty space next to the doorway and added three items to the model.
My agent patched my home servers against a security hole and kept watch all day
A man who runs his own services at home sent his AI an article about a PHP security hole. The agent patched the services that had a fix, stopped the ones that did not, set up a watch for new fixes, and updated and restarted nearly everything as fixes landed through the day.
Make my Canon photo printer work with Linux
A commenter in a hardware reverse-engineering thread says he had the AI develop a working Bluetooth CUPS driver for his Canon Zoemini 2 mini photo printer. Canon only supports the printer from smartphones, so the driver made it usable from his Linux machine.
My agent plans my meals each week and writes the grocery list
He gave an agent his favorite meals, his dietary limits and the food he has on hand. It makes a weekly food plan and a full grocery list, and he tells it over the week which meals he liked.
The AI tends his home system: dashboards, integrations, and locks when he leaves
The AI connected to his Home Assistant updates dashboards, adds integrations and automations, including auto-locking the house when his phone is away unless guests are on guest WiFi.
Design the brackets and fittings my home actually needs
A homeowner describes what he wants, measures, and picks up terminology - the AI does the build123d/OpenSCAD modeling, and he prints the parts: the house is now filled with on-demand attachments and affordances, and his wife has switched from Blender to the same describe-and-print workflow.
A renovation skill loads his whole project before it checks an invoice or drafts a mail
His AI skill was built from his earlier renovation sessions and loads on its own whenever he mentions the house, the contractor or an invoice. It carries the project context, the key contract clauses and where every file lives, holds a step by step invoice verification checklist, and drafts his emails in a language that is not his own, with a pre-send check that every number matches the project register.
Run my living-room lights and fans from an ESP32
A hobbyist says the AI assembled the firmware running his living-room lights and fans: an ESP32 web server driving a radio transmitter. It also built him a Streamlit app to explore the signals, and the code is public on GitHub.
Smoke leaked into my studio. My assistant checked the air and told me to leave.
Smoke from his sauna stove leaked into his home studio. He asked his AI assistant to check the AirGradient sensor in Home Assistant, it told him to leave until the air improved, and it wrote a script that polls particulate levels and pings him on Telegram once it is safe.
My TV app took 30 seconds to open, so I reverse engineered the TV and built my own
His 2019 LG TV has a great screen, but the official Plex app took about 30 seconds just to show the profile picker, because it is really a web page. There is no public native toolkit for the TV, so he rooted a spare set, read the TVs own software with analysis tools and the AI, and built a native Plex client of his own. On the same TV it shows the profile picker in about 3 seconds.
School prints go in Slack. Our family calendar fills itself.
A parent of three was copying school, cram school and nursery dates from paper prints, LINE and email into Google Calendar by hand, and nearly missed a field trip lunch. He built Hanamaru: the family posts a photo of a print in Slack, the AI pulls out the dates, and it registers them on the right child's calendar, asking in the thread first when it is not sure.
The AI named the broken fridge part from my photo. It arrives tomorrow.
A clip snapped off his fridge door, so he sent the AI a photo of it. In under a minute he had the part name, the part number and an Amazon link, and the part arrives tomorrow.
Every idea is a real post from someone who tried it, summarized in our words, with a link to the original. App names are swapped for plain words.