The AI turned my designs into 3D files I could print
He needed his designs as 3D files he could print. The AI created the renders in Blender via MCP, then optimized the files for his printer.
A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.
Home
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.
Sort my whole move into keep, donate and discard from room photos
Neo Tsang recounts uploading room photos and an inventory to the AI a month before moving; the AI categorised everything by usage frequency into keep, donate and discard, with a room-by-room packing sequence. He also had the AI break down three movers' quotes line by line and picked the middle option at nearly half the most expensive quote (the post closes with a referral code).
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 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.
A camera over his bins tells him which ones go out tonight, lit by a coloured LED
Home Assistant sends a bin camera image to the Anthropic API, gets JSON for which bins are visible, notifies him which bins to put out or return, and lights a color LED Bindicator; the AI configured the automations via MCP.
The AI one-shot a dashboard for his air conditioning system
The AI one-shot a custom web dashboard to control his Samsung AC system.
The AI helped me set up my router to block ads
He had given up on setting up his router to block ads because the troubleshooting took more effort than he had. Working with AI agent, he got it set up.
Hunt Facebook Marketplace for my new apartment's furniture and message the sellers
During a week-long, move-in agent test, the journalist's the AI (Mark) logged into her Facebook, scoured Marketplace for couches, lamps and rugs, drafted and sent seller messages with her approval, and managed the replies. The hunt ended with a real purchase: an AI-sourced dining table.
After two e-bikes were stolen, the AI took control of my garage door
Two e-bikes were stolen after his garage was left open by accident. He set up closing on its own when the door stays open for 15 minutes, and in his own reply on the thread he says he bought a ratgdo control board and the AI wrote and installed the new firmware, so the AI now has full control of the opener and can disable the remotes.
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.
His agent found and reserved him a parking spot in San Francisco today
A man reports that he used his agent that day to find and reserve a parking spot in San Francisco. He had earlier used AI to gather his AWS invoices for a reimbursement.
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 built a home screen widget showing my kid's school lunch menu
While he was doing the dishes on Sunday, the AI made him a home screen widget that shows his kid's school lunch menu. He says he never would have made it himself.
The AI on the car's data bus killed the dashboard and safety systems while moving
The AI put on the CAN bus of cars stomped frames and killed the gauge cluster and traction and stability systems while the car was moving.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
Fill 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.
Car Chaser: hunt used cars with rules stock filters cannot express
Brian Roemmele’s directory-listed Car Chaser bot searches major car listing sites with IF/THEN and OR rules that stock filters cannot express, surfacing cars that match his real trade-offs rather than simple year-and-price boxes. It is an ongoing conditional search, not a one-time query.
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 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 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 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.
My agent found the fault on my combine that a paid mechanic missed
A farmer's John Deere combine had an electronics fault for days and a paid Deere mechanic could not find it. Working with AI, he built a test suite that read the machine's CanBUS messages and the traces from his oscilloscope, and compared both against a second working combine. They found two faulty controllers and the machine runs again.
My bot found the broken part in my dryer, ordered it, and talked me through the fix
His dryer broke and he asked the AI for help instead of calling a repair company. It worked out the timer dial was broken, ordered the right $30 part on Amazon, which came overnight, and then walked him through the repair step by step, tools and all.
$200
The AI checked my home servers and router for security holes and found a lot
He gave the AI SSH access to his Proxmox homelab and his UniFi router and told it to run a security audit. It found a lot of holes to patch, work that would have meant juggling more than 12 terminals and containers by hand.
I asked the AI to make an agent for my wife’s iMessages and got a watcher
He tried AI on his Mac and asked it to make an agent for his wife’s iMessages. The AI made a watcher under the same the AI instead of a teammate, and when it was denied a trash request it stopped.
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 turned his old home plan into 3D, redid a room and priced the shopping list
A man had a poor quality home plan from the previous owner. For about $1 of his usage quota, the AI converted the drawing into 3D, changed the room he wanted to redo, made a few visual options, built a shopping list from his local store with budgets, and put it all on a local web page. He says the same job done the normal way would take a package of apps, trained people and at least $10,000.
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.
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.
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 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.
The AI watched for his new aquarium thermometer and swapped it into his home system
The AI, given a Home Assistant API key, watched for the new Bluetooth aquarium thermometer he installed, replaced the broken one's entities with it, and verified graphs and automations worked.
Free the AI designed a replacement coat hanger joint he printed in 10 minutes
Free the AI produced an OpenSCAD file he converted to STL and 3D printed a replacement coat hanger joint in 10 minutes, part now in use.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The AI fixed a CarPlay bug in my car's head unit
He used AI to fix a CarPlay bug in his car's Android head unit. He gave it the piece of hardware and it worked out how to talk to it and fix the bug.
I built a morning checklist app with AI so my daughter forgets less
A mother built a morning checklist app with AI over about two weeks, running on a server at home. Her daughter checks it on a tablet each morning, and the usual items open on their own from her timetable, so she is less unsure about what to bring.
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 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 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 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.
The AI implemented a pairing protocol in Swift just by talking to his smart plugs
Got the AI to implement TPAP compatibility in Swift purely by interacting with his local plugs and response shapes plus RFC 9383, figuring out it was SPAKE2+ and the password hashing steps.
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.
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.
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 fixed my cookie recipe and saved it to Mealie
His cookie recipe never came out right, so he gave the job to the AI. The AI adjusted the recipe for higher altitude, changed the prep steps to keep the butter colder longer, and put the fixed recipe into Mealie.
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.
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.
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 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 wrote and installed new firmware for my garage door opener
He bought a ratgdo control board for his garage door opener. The AI wrote and installed new firmware for it, and it can update the firmware too, so it now has full control of the opener, including the ability to disable the remotes.
File my insurance claim from my Tesla Sentry footage
A Tesla owner’s the AI took a Sentry-mode scratch incident end to end: it cut the relevant clip, identified the other car, wrote the incident report and sent the insurance claim. The whole claim package was assembled from the car’s own footage without the owner editing video or forms.
I built a bark logger to prove the neighbor's dog barks for hours
One of several tools he built with AI: a program that listens for the neighbor's dog, detects the barking and logs it to a spreadsheet, so he has a record before he complains.
A local model watches his cameras for open garages, cat sick and thirsty plants
A local LLM in Home Assistant checks camera images for garage door open, cat vomit and plants, notifies him and pauses the cleaning robot schedule, replacing flaky sensors.
The AI made a 3D print file from my photos and I printed the bracket
He needed a bracket to hold a small LCD above a circuit board. He sent the AI photos of the board and the display, the AI made a 3D print file, and he printed the bracket at the library.
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.
His old 50 euro mini PC now blocks ads at home
He dug out a forgotten 50 euro mini PC and put Linux and Pi-hole on it. With the AI and community lists, it now blocks more than 3 million advertising and telemetry domains.
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.
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.