The AI found the old house my aunt lived in. I had looked for years.
She had looked for years for the enormous old house where her late aunt once had a basement apartment, working only from childhood memories and almost no details. The AI found it.
A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.
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Your place, your car and your pets · 265 ideasFill in my GO Train PRESTO service-guarantee claim
The AI completed and submitted the PRESTO service-guarantee form for a disrupted GO Train trip, the transit agency's compensation route most riders never bother with.
The AI made an energy report from my home energy system
He added an MCP server to his home energy management system and had the AI generate an energy report from it. He calls it pretty slick, though the Octopus Energy tariff changes the price when his car is plugged in and charging, and he does not know how to model that.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
An AI agent wrote the firmware and CAD for my radar stair light over four weeks
Over four weeks of evenings, an AI agent wrote the firmware, the live web chart, the Node-RED automation and the enclosure CAD for his radar stair light, driving a live Fusion 360 session through its scripting API. He reviewed, printed and measured, and the second half of the video lists what the agent got confidently wrong, including a radome gap that landed on exactly a quarter wavelength.
I built my mechanic friend a car diagnostic app that talks to the AI
His friend keeps his kids cars running and refuses payment, so he found a way to pay him back. He bought a $70 USB adapter that reads car data, and with AI built a server that collects it and lets the AI dig into the readings and suggest what to check. He has tested it on his own 2024 Honda and his friends 2003 GMC truck.
We built a local family assistant that runs our calendar and reminders
His family of three uses a local assistant called Sadie, built on a home server so their calendar, photos and messages stay off cloud services. Sadie runs their shared calendar, sends location based reminders, answers texts and emails, searches family photos, and sorts household mail, flagging bills and school deadlines.
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.
The AI automated my heating control
He says the AI automated the heating control in his home. The post tags his heat pump and his Home Assistant setup.
The AI told me to pull a breaker out of my panel right away
He was researching new circuits for a heat pump he is putting in at home, and the AI urged him to remove one specific 60 amp breaker from his electrical panel right away, even though that breaker had given him no trouble. He took the advice and says it saved his house and probably his life.
Draw my 17-page solar permit set in under five minutes
An engineer gave the AI his house drawings, the original solar plans and a Powerwall expansion permit (mostly PDFs plus DXF files) after a contractor was slow to quote, and the bot produced a complete 17-page B-size permit drawing package in under five minutes, including a roof layout and one-line wiring diagrams drawn from scratch. He checked every line himself and planned to submit once a licensed engineer stamped the structural parts.
A camera on his rental boiler texts him when the heating leaves its normal range
He put a camera on his rental property boiler and uses AI to read the screen and zone lights, texting him when anything goes outside normal operating parameters.
Identify my discontinued drill battery from a photo and find one on eBay
From a photo, the AI identified the user's discontinued drill battery and found an aftermarket replacement on eBay.
I used AI to build a chronology of my life and ancestry. 9,200 entries.
She used AI to create a chronology of her life and her ancestry with about 9,200 entries. She says she can base a memoir, a biography, or a family tree on it, and that the AI is good at coordinating the data even if it cannot write the book.
His family picked the warm theme the AI sketched and the AI built into their home app
The AI mocked up theme options and the AI implemented the warm theme in his HomeOS app, which his family chose and uses.
The AI fixed my reef tank lights. They had been dimmed to 35 percent for months.
His corals died but the tank lights still ran a coral schedule. The AI drove a Raspberry Pi over Bluetooth, changed the light and pump schedules, and found the lights had been dimmed to about 35 percent and their clock was 6 and a half hours late, then fixed the time.
The AI helped me build a Linux driver for my family film negatives
After his mother died he inherited a box of family film negatives and bought a Plustek 8200i scanner, then found its new chip had no Linux support. The AI helped him capture the Windows driver traffic and build a working SANE driver. Within a few hours he had his first good scan, and days later a near perfect driver with infrared dust removal.
An LLM looks at his robot vacuum's camera and decides whether the floor is clear
His LLM agent reviews his robot vacuum's images and either sends the vacuum out or suggests moving things that would foul it up; works great.
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.
My agent got my USPS shipping label ready to go
Figuring out USPS forms is a headache for this poster, especially for international shipping. They told their AI agent what they needed, and it got a shipping label ready to go, leaving them to purchase, print, and drop off the package.
The AI could not set up an alert for when my doorbell rings
He tried to use AI for a simple home automation job, an email or text when someone rings his doorbell. He calls it a complete failure.
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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.