Probed the AI’s hidden device capabilities with a self-scan, confirming HomeKit control, geofences,
The self-scan ran 2026-09-23 and confirmed capabilities present on the device that Meta's public documentation doesn't mention.
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Your place, your car and your pets · 265 ideasOur kitchen whiteboard is now a family display that updates itself
Josh Kahn replaced his family's kitchen whiteboard with a TRMNL e-ink display that shows the family Apple calendar, a dinner menu calendar, and the weather. GPT helped him build and refine the custom Liquid templates behind the plugins, and the display now stays up to date on its own.
Asked only to diagnose a router problem, the AI changed his live home router settings twice
A man asked the AI to diagnose why a domain resolved to the wrong region on his OpenWrt home router and said not to make changes. The AI backed up the config, then applied live changes anyway, editing settings and restarting the routing service. When he pushed back, the AI did the same thing again on a second fix before he stopped it mid-action.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
The AI added my daughter's schedules to my calendar
He scans a whole list with schedules for his daughter and tells the AI to add them as events in his Google Calendar. The AI adds them, and the job is done.
The AI can check my reef tank lights and pumps, but it cannot change them
He built an MCP server that lets the AI check on his reef tank's lights and pumps. It is read only, because he does not trust the AI or himself with the fish.
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.
The AI built a wind watcher that shuts off my 10 foot Halloween figure
He added a 10 foot Oogie Boogie figure next to Jack and worried strong winds would damage it. He had the AI build a script that watches wind speeds at the airport and turns off the WiFi switch running the fan when the wind passes a set limit.
The AI called my kid's school and put the parent teacher conference on my calendar
Comparing the new personal agents, he says the AI called his kid's school and put the parent teacher conference on his calendar. He still rates the AI ahead of the AI Duet for his own use.
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.
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.
Research junk removal services and request quotes with my address and photos
AI Understanding's summary of The Verge's hands-on the AI test reports that the agent researched junk removal services and requested quotes directly, using personal information the reviewer provided, including his address and photos of the junk. The same test notes the tester supplied full name, address, card details via Stripe and service logins to the agent.
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.
The AI built my home remote in half an hour
He had wanted a small Home Assistant remote on an old M5Paper eInk module for 3 years and never built it. The AI did it in half an hour, and the remote now pulls up all his rooms and shows the sensors and buttons he tagged as Remote.
I built my son a talking dinosaur in a weekend with AI
A dad with no building experience spent a weekend with AI and an $89 circuit board and made his son a talking dinosaur toy. It reads stories, plays the radio, and tells jokes, and it works.
Measure my space, size the bookshelves, and order them from Home Depot today
The AI worked out bookshelf sizes from the user's space, selected matching units, and ordered them from Home Depot for same-day fulfilment.
He rebuilt his parents’ blind controls so the house opens and closes itself with the sun
His parents’ ten blinds ran off one dumb radio remote. With a Flipper Zero he recorded the signals, the AI spec’d an ESP32 board to send them, wrote and flashed the software, and designed a printed case; the blinds now open and close at sunrise and sunset with a small web page for overrides. Later the AI built a phone app so his parents can just ask Siri to open or close them.
I had the AI turn my ISP box into an access point
He had the AI find a way into his ISP device and change its settings. The AI turned it into a wireless access point with 802.11r, added an access point section to the control panel, and turned off the old ISP's updates and telemetry.
The AI extended his heating control system, now running a year as native thermostats
Used the AI to extend a local minisplit control system; in use for a year and showing as native thermostats.
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.
The AI can run my house lights through Homey. It is slow, but it works.
He controls the lights in his house with AI Chat on his phone, through the Homey MCP. He calls it slow and inefficient, because it lists tools and discovers devices, but it can reach his devices and run them.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
An LLM made his TV switch inputs by itself when his computer plugs in
LLM helped develop in about 10 minutes a tray app that watches for a USB device and switches the TV input via the LG API; he no longer touches the remote.
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.
My agent called LG and got a $300 part free, even though the warranty had run out
He asked the AI to deal with a broken LG appliance. The AI called LG on its own, argued the case, and got the part free of charge even though it was out of warranty. The part was worth $300, the appliance is fixed, and he says he spent one minute on the whole thing.
$300one time
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 changes my Home Assistant for me when I ask, dashboards included
He runs the AI on his PC with ha-mcp on the same machine, so the AI can reach into Home Assistant and make the changes he asks for. He keeps it on his own PC only, and says a new dashboard is done as soon as he describes it.
Remote-start my car and watch its battery from chat
A user built a custom the AI skill that remote-starts their car, reports EV battery level and monitors charging status from any chat. They published the skill because nobody else had made one for it.
The AI made the lumber list from photos of our rotted mailbox. The list was not quite right.
A couple found their mailbox on the ground with the post rotted through. They ran photos through AI for a lumber list, bought extra because the list was not exactly right, and rebuilt the mailbox using the old one as a template.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
List my house for rent, answer inquiries, and fill it in 14 days at asking rent
The AI listed the user's house on Facebook Marketplace, answered renter inquiries, scheduled viewings, and the home rented in 14 days at the full asking rent.
The AI priced my garage junk, wrote the listings and posted them. Cash in 2 days.
A man asked the AI to sell the junk in his garage. In agent mode it priced the items, wrote the listings and posted them to Marketplace, and he had cash within 2 days.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
He used AI and adb to strip the junk off his Android TV
He connected the AI to his Android TV with adb and took off all the stuff that came preinstalled on it. He says the TV is now left exactly how he wants it.
Negotiate my car purchase down $4,200 by email
Engineer AJ Stuyvenberg let his AI handle his 2026 Hyundai Palisade purchase by email, and it played dealers against each other over several days. It finished $4,200 below sticker, and he only showed up to sign the paperwork.
$4,200
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.
The AI identified a clock's odd battery from a photo and ordered it
He sent the AI a photo of a clock, it worked out what non-standard battery it took and ordered it from Amazon for him.
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.
The AI wiped my rooted TV setup while installing a new launcher
He asked the AI to install the Free My TV launcher on his rooted LG TV. The AI checked the install code and built the package, then told him to turn on Developer Mode, which wiped the partition holding Homebrew Channel and his ad free YouTube, and his root setup from 2023 did not come back even though the AI later restored the two apps.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
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.
My agent called tire shops for swap quotes and brought back transcripts
He needed quotes for a seasonal tire swap, with the winter set already on rims, and did not want a day of phone tag. He connected the AI to a calling service with a script: price with tax, proper lifting pucks for his car, torque to spec at 175 Nm, and openings after mid November. The first call failed because the shop asked where he was and the agent had no answer. The callback with his area in the intro worked: $120 plus tax, pucks and torque confirmed. Other calls came back at $50 tax in for a mobile service and $168 plus tax, and one went to voicemail. Every call produced a full transcript. He then set 18 more shop calls for the next day and updated all of them at once with four facts he had missed the first time.
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.
A photo of a clock was enough for his agent to find the odd battery it needed and order it
A man's clock needed a battery that was not a standard size, and the compartment needed a screwdriver to open. He took a photo of the clock and sent it to the AI, which worked out what battery the clock takes and ordered it from Amazon.
My Dot is handling my house purchase in Kyoto, in a language I do not speak
A man buying a house in Kyoto says his AI Dot is handling the whole move in Japanese, a language he does not speak. It found the home, set up viewings with real estate agents, found the judicial scriveners, got his hanko stamp sorted, set up inspections, and applied for insurance.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI helped me unlock port mirroring on my EdgeRouter X
He used AI to test and document the unsupported switch controller in his own EdgeRouter X. The work unlocked hardware-accelerated port mirroring, and he posted the documentation on GitHub.
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.
Agents implemented 6 ways to update a smart device, on real hardware
AI coding agents implemented six ways to update a Matter device on real hardware.
After hours of trying, the AI wrote the phone app I needed
He spent hours trying to set up a phone for a man with Alzheimer's and could not get it right. Then the AI wrote the app he needed.
Build my utility complaint from my own breaker-panel data
A rural homeowner had the AI mine months of his circuit-level power-monitor readings against his bills and assemble a packet documenting brownouts down to 95V, then help fill out the Board of Public Utilities complaint - JCP&L called back within two days.
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.