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.
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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.
Run my buddy’s sprinklers off the weather and cut his water bill
A user set an AI running his friend’s sprinkler system based on weather patterns, and reported big savings on the water bill. The system waters when the forecast says it matters, not on a dumb timer.
An AI one-liner fixed his home integration's restart bug; he keeps the fork himself now
AI fixed a Home Assistant integration restart bug with a one-liner that works for him, and now maintains his personal fork with the patch against upstream.
He got his dad out of a $120 parking ticket with AI
He used AI to fight a parking ticket his 82 year old dad had been given. The $120 ticket went away.
$120
The AI put the school special days on our family calendar
He had the AI add all the special days from the Pittsburgh Public Schools calendar into the family calendar. It was a win, but the school calendar itself had errors, and he spent 30 minutes working out which day was wrong.
Manage my bulldog's vet care — appointments, budgets and research
A dog owner shows app screenshots of her AI 'Sir Gilbert' helping manage her bulldog Omar's care: scheduling and planning vet appointments, budgeting during a food-allergy trial, creating a budget for anticipated vet bills, and researching local veterinary dentists suited to a flat-faced breed. She frames it as offloading the scheduling, budgeting and service-finding so she can focus on her dog and baby.
The AI replaced Assistant and my smart plugs barely work now
His Pixel 4a sits by his bed all day and Google Assistant used to turn his smart plugs on and off within 5 seconds of a voice command. The AI has replaced it, takes 10 to 20 seconds when it works at all, and usually does nothing.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
My kids always wanted two player Mario, so the AI made the mod
His kids have always been disappointed that Super Mario Bros. for the NES does not have two player co-op like the 21st century Mario games. Today he got the AI with Opus 5.5 to make a two player simultaneous mod. You can pick Mario, Luigi, Toad or Peach, and it works on a real NES.
It chased my flatmate on email and Instagram until he sent the receipt my oven warranty case needed
Their Ninja oven died with a mystery error code. His AI researched the fault, dealt with the support case, and found the manufacturer needed purchase details, but the oven was a gift from his flatmate's dad. The agent chased the flatmate by email and Instagram DM until he sent the receipt, then sent everything off to the manufacturer. The case was unblocked.
The AI built a simple phone dialer for my dad, who has Alzheimer's
No app fit what his father needed, so the AI wrote a bare bones dialer in about an hour. It only shows accept and reject buttons, and he says it is perfect.
My agent moves my smart home devices between networks so I do not have to open every app
She gave her agent a rack mounted phone to control over ADB and its own Bitwarden account for passwords. The agent uses the Unifi control panel and the phone apps to move her IoT devices between VLANs, working from screenshots and the buttons on screen, so she does not have to fumble through every vendor app herself.
The smart home app would not talk to agents, so now the AI runs my house
TP-Link has no official way for an agent to control its Tapo devices, so he took the app apart, worked out how it talks to the lights, plugs, sensors and cameras on his home network, and built a connector the AI can use. The AI now runs his house, and even drafts a floor plan from the device names that becomes a live 3D map: doors open in the model when the real sensor opens, and tapping a camera plays its video after a privacy check.
The AI edited and printed his storage labels on his Brother printer
He did not feel like editing and printing groups of numbered labels himself on his Brother label printer, so he handed the task to the AI. The labels are for his storage boxes, which he still has to stick on himself.
Luna finished the doorbell panel software that answers calls and shows the video
Luna finished an ESP32 SIP client for an in-wall touch panel that rings when someone is at his doorbell and lets him answer calls and see video.
Set up a spare Android phone as the agent's own device: The AI
The open-source 'burner' project gives the AI a real spare Android phone (Android 11+). The agent uses the phone's apps exactly like a human would — opening them, tapping, typing, scrolling — and sends the user screenshots, extending its reach to marketplaces and shopping apps with no website or API.
My agent hit a human check on Uber and could not finish the ride
Peter Yang used Duet's Uber ride skill and gave it the Palace of Fine Arts as his destination. Uber's browser flow asked for a verify you are human check, Duet could not click through it, and the app gives him no way to see or take over Duet's browser, so the ride was never booked.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
Every morning my setup tells me when to charge the car and when to run the laundry
A Danish homeowner linked OpenAI to data from Home Assistant: his car battery, the family calendars and electricity prices. Every morning he gets a small report with advice on when to charge the car and when to wash and dry clothes.
The AI runs my Home Assistant and writes its automations
After the AI started managing his home systems, he gave it control of Home Assistant too. It proved good at writing automations and doing the setup, and he later moved Home Assistant into a Docker image.
An app built with AI reads his solar panels and sets his battery charging each night
He built an app with AI that reads his solar inverter and batteries, forecasts tomorrow's solar generation and household use, and emails him a report. It sets the battery charge level for the overnight cheap tariff based on the forecast.
The AI set up his hallway lights and motion routine from a plain description
The AI set up a complex Home Assistant routine with lights and motion sensors from a description, working when he walks past the sensor.
The AI runs his car and garage from the road, watching the house's power and calendar
The AI in the car, with Gmail and Home Assistant connectors, calculated car charging from home power metrics and calendar, and operated the garage door, lights and air conditioners from the car.
I linked the AI to my smart home hub and talk to my house
A Hubitat owner built a free app that connects his home hub to the AI. He asks the AI if the garage door is closed, tells it to set the house to Night mode, and has it write spoken alert rules, like warning him when a window stays open while the heat is on.
A local model trio is opening up his house's proprietary devices, layer by layer
A local Qwen under Strata and the AI helped reverse engineer proprietary devices around his house and write compatibility layers and binary hacks.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
GPT-6 Astra jailbroke my old Kindle and turned it into a photo frame
Niraj Rajgor's unused 10th generation Kindle is now a photo frame. Working through AI over Wi-Fi, GPT-6 Astra built tools to run custom software on the Kindle and installed a slideshow app that cycles ten photos, four minutes each, and picks up where it left off after sleep.
The AI called Best Buy and narrowed my 12 hour repair window
He had a Best Buy TV repair booked for the next day with a 12 hour window, 7 in the morning to 7 at night. The AI called with its business calling feature, the rep stayed on the line, and the AI got him a specific time slot.
Agent 'Tay' planned a birthday party in an 8-page printable plan
Her AI Tay produced an 8-page printable birthday party plan ('Shine Like a Star') with a $700 budget breakdown; she approved it and Tay set three calendar reminders.
He turned a 45 euro stopwatch into a home info display overnight
He bought an M5Stack stopwatch for 45 euros and never used it as one. With the AI he turned it into a round Home Assistant info display with 14 modules overnight, in under 25 minutes of typing himself.
The AI flashed his router with open firmware, running the exploit itself
The AI helped flash his router with OpenWrt, including running an exploit itself and instructing the UART steps to load the binary permanently.
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.
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.