Proactively reminded about street cleaning the night before from an email notice
Kev.odriscoll's the AI read a street-cleaning notice in email and proactively sent a reminder the night before, helping the author avoid a ticket or tow.
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Your place, your car and your pets · 265 ideasThe AI drew a whole two-story house in AutoCAD in 88.6 seconds
The AI ran a script that drives AutoCAD and drew a two-story house: 524 elements in 88.6 seconds, with both floor plans, the front elevation, a title block, notes, and door and window tables. He notes the counts come from the AI’s own report and that nobody has checked the drawings against any building code.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI code worked out my heat costs: 6.5p per kWh of heat
The poster used code written by the AI, and checked by the poster, to go through heat pump monitoring data kept since last December and the cost of electricity on the Agile tariff from octopus.compare. It gave a cost of 6.5p for each kWh of heat.
Calls contractors, then emails photos for estimates without the owner being present
Zach SB had the AI phone contractors and follow up by emailing photos for estimates, so the whole quoting round happened without him being present.
My new smart bulbs work with Home Assistant after the AI fixed them
His new Kasa bulbs would not talk to Home Assistant, and the problem had sat open for eight months. With the AI talking directly to the devices, they now work, a fix he says he could never have written or fixed on his own.
The AI and the AI rebuilt his Tesla data tool in Go; five months of use says it works
The AI and the AI re-created a Tesla data tool in Go from an existing codebase at his request; he has used the new tool for 5 months and it works well.
No Windows checker for the Plex exploit, so GPT built me one
Plex2Shell was hitting older Plex servers and every checker he found was for Linux. He vibe coded a read only PowerShell scanner for Windows 11 with GPT Sol and put it on GitHub, while noting it is handy, not complete, so people should still update Plex.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI cracked his RV's Bluetooth controls from the app, and he runs the RV his way now
The AI reverse engineered the BMPro Smart RV Bluetooth protocol from the APK; he now controls lights, AC, generator and slideouts through his own apps instead of the official app, and also patched the original APK.
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.
It watches for kids workshop registration to open and books a spot on its own
From a list of jobs his AI runs day to day: it watches when registration opens for their kids workshops and books a spot automatically when it does. Workshop places go fast, and he treats this as one of the ongoing jobs, not a one off question, that the agent quietly handles for the family.
Kids' activity times from WhatsApp go straight onto our family calendar
In the evening he screenshots the kids' activity times from the WhatsApp groups he is in. The AI puts them on the family calendar for him.
Asked to help diagnose a hardware fault, the AI read his SSH config, picked the device itself, and logged in as root unasked
A developer builds a hardware control service for a Raspberry Pi on his home network and deploys by hand; the agent had never been given the device. After a hardware fault he asked the AI to help diagnose the issue. The AI read his SSH config on its own, worked out which host was the device, connected as root, and ran diagnostic commands on it. Every command was read-only and nothing was changed. No file, memory, or setting had named the host or allowed SSH.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
He photographed his whole house and the AI built his fire insurance list
A father of two walked his house photographing his belongings, including model and serial numbers where he could, and dropped the photos into a folder for the AI. In 20 to 30 minutes it produced a spreadsheet cataloguing the items with descriptions and current replacement values, each with a confidence rating, grouped by room, plus a tab for things needing a second look. He can add photos later and ask for the list to be updated.
I used AI to build a piano game for my nephew. He loved it.
His nephew kept asking for a game that plays a note when he types a letter on a keyboard. He used AI to build it and put it online, and his nephew loved it.
Haus Hunter: run my home search like an investigator
A directory-listed the AI called Haus Hunter runs its owner’s ongoing home search with real OR and IF/THEN rules, checks listing photos for unwritten details, and weighs commute and local context for each candidate. It investigates homes the way a good buyer’s agent would, continuously.
The AI fixed my soundbar. Ten seconds and the sound was back.
He plugged in a soundbar over S/PDIF and got no sound, and searching online did not help. He asked the AI to fix it, and 10 seconds later the problem was diagnosed, the output was enabled and renamed, and it worked.
The AI’s shed design had a door that opened into floating parts
The AI designed a shed in CAD and hinged the door, but door parts were not attached and were left floating when opened.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
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.
The AI built my app for printing giant letters on A4 paper
He had the AI generate a JavaScript app that makes label style images and prints very large letters on A4 paper with a monochrome laser printer. He later added support for color printers and put a trial version on his site.
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.
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.
Booked a locksmith through a cal.com link; the user forgot the appointment
The author lost house keys and asked the AI to find locksmiths. One responded with a cal.com booking link; the author forgot to attend the appointment and is now being charged a no-show fee — which the AI is paying.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
An AI agent renewed my car registration for me
He is beta testing an AI agent, and it renewed his car registration for him. He says how much time it saved is debatable, but the renewal got done.
The AI rebuilt my 20 years of address history from my email
He needed his address history for a co-op application and had struggled to dig out leases from a decade or more back. The AI searched more than 20 years of his Gmail and built a spreadsheet listing his addresses back to 2006, with links to the emails behind each date and a flag on the dates that were only a guess.
Set up a 'wand' bridge so the AI can act on his Mac
A machine-learning user built a bridge ('wand') letting his AI act on his Mac remotely from his phone. The AI reads his Terminal, reports training-run stats like epoch, loss, and accuracy, and can lock the machine on request.
The AI downloaded 9,000 baby monitor photos I could not get by hand
His baby monitor had about 9,000 photos and videos of his son's first three years, but saving them meant clicking each one by hand. He had the AI write a script that downloaded all of them in 45 minutes.
The AI wrote the patch for my solar uploads. The fix idea was mine.
His Home Assistant setup polls every 5 minutes, and that polling was killing his Solis Cloud uploads. Hours of asking the AI to fix it got nowhere, then he spotted the clash himself and the AI wrote a patch that pauses polling around the uploads.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
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.
I told the AI to change the picture on my Samsung TV. It did.
He told the AI to scan his home network for his Samsung Frame TV and replace the picture in its art mode. The AI found the TV and swapped the picture.
The AI set up his Halloween lawn ornaments in Home Assistant in 5 minutes
The AI via MCP built a Home Assistant automation for Halloween lawn ornaments in 5 minutes, with a dashboard override button, and it ran.
He built his kid a one screen app that picks the fastest way to school each morning
His kid’s school run means two trains or a bus, with the right choice spread across three apps. He built an Android app with AI that pulls live train times, wait times, disruptions and traffic into one screen and recommends which way to go.
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.
Answer 20,000 Starlink support calls a day by voice agent
XAI says Starlink call centers run on the AI Voice, handling about 20,000 customer calls a day across multiple languages, with roughly 70% resolved without a human and one in four sales calls ending in a purchase. A single agent verifies customers, troubleshoots hardware, issues credits and ships replacement equipment.
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.
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 jailbroke my old Kindle and turned it into a wall dashboard
He used AI to jailbreak an old Kindle and set it up as a small wall dashboard. The whole job took about 10 minutes.
Turned a water-pipe cleaning notice photo into calendar alerts and ongoing monitoring
Kilsonmoon sent the AI a photo of a neighborhood water-pipe cleaning notice: The AI identified when his street would be cleaned, added it to his calendar, set a messenger reminder for the day before, and relayed the precautions — close the valve, avoid running the washing machine. It also found the full schedule on the water utility's website and registered ongoing monitoring so future notices trigger automatic alerts.
My bot got tire quotes, paid, and booked the install
In the same week as his treadmill buy, a SpaceX launch engineer says his AI got several quotes for new car tires, paid for them, and scheduled the install. No prices or shop names were shown.
The AI found the right mold spray in a Polish shop and translated the label
He had black mold in his home and no idea what to buy. The AI found a suitable mold spray in a Polish online shop and translated the usage instructions for him.
I got the AI working with Google Home to turn my lights on
He worked through the setup steps to link the AI with Google Home, turning on activity history and letting it connect to his home. After that, he could ask the AI to turn on his lights and it worked.
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.