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Comment by tfolbrecht | Hacker News Reader

One of the biggest automation arena improvements I've made in my life is creating visual cue reminders and systems for a sort of stateful orderliness.

When the laundry basket gets full past the painter tape line, I do a load. I load the dishwasher after dinner, and unload it in the morning regardless of the volume. Got a roomba that runs every other day and cries when it's full of dirt.

I have NFC stickers that link to start webapp timers in my smart phones browser (just a url to googles timer web app, pre populated with time, I get push notifications and all that) tea brewing timer, Laundry+ Dryer, cooking, all cheap NFC sticker+ webapp

I also wrote a bot that alerts me when 3D printer deals from trusted retailers are going on. I just bought two for $160 each, with free shipping!

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One of the best life hacks I found is to buy those stackable laundry baskets and sort them as you wear them instead of dumping them all in one and sorting right before doing laundry.

I've been doing the same thing for years. I have two bins each for socks, underwear, and t-shirts. when the dirty one fills, I wash it then dump into the respective clean one. The trick is to buy a full loads worth of socks, and a full loads worth of underwear which is probably an unusually large amount for most people. Throw hardware at the problem!

I do this with the small things that I need to buy, keep one roll of toothpaste (or whatever) that is being used, another in a cupboard. As soon as you take one out of the cupboard, buy new one to put in the cupboard.

99% of my clothing are pants, shorts, underwear, t-shirts and socks, and I've never felt the need to sort them - everything goes into a washer, then a dryer, then gets sorted into dresser/closet. Are your clothes significantly different from mine, or is there an actual benefit to washing your socks separately from your pants?

(Or are you talking about separating things like sheets, towels, etc?)

I sort mine too - depends on the color. Darks go in cold and whites generally on hot.

I wear a lot of white sports socks. All of them are pure white after years of having them.

Funny how a bit of sorting makes a difference. Sames goes for trash, I plan to have few bags so you can them dump each blindly.

Can you elaborate on your NFC sticker setup and how automated it is? Do you have to initiate anything manually when starting the tea or laundry for example?

https://tfolbrecht.com/automation/dishwashertimer/

So I write those links to the NFC stickers (click one on mobile)

stickers: https://www.ebay.com/i/332153052651?chn=ps&dispItem=1

Write on them with a sharpie, When I go to use it, I tap my smartphone(stock android) and it automatically launches the browser to the webapp

I'm looking to buy a basic 3D printer this week but have no significant knowledge. Mind linking the one you bought?

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1682884...

Caveat: You have to get around the DRM, and the software it uses to make 3d print file from an STL runs on Windows or MacOS, closed source, no Linux support. I run Windows in a VM for the slicer.

I’d love to get a 3d printer for 160! Can you point me in the right direction? (Or add me to your alert)

Newegg Business, Davinci XYZ jr 1.0

There's DRM on the filament and it's PLA only, but you can buy the key to unlock and rewrite the DRM NFC chip. I use an app on my phone to rewrite the values

Is that a really good printer? I’m seeing bad reviews?

It's a printer you can get for $160. At that price I would expect more bad reviews because of unrealistic expectations.

It's an okay 3d printer. I use it for making toys, statues, etc. There are various companies that offer 3d printing as a service with different materials, precisions, surface finishes etc like stratasys, 3D hubs, xometry.

These printers are nice to prototype with before sending it to a more costly and less time investment forgiving production printer, or quick around the house jobs/play.

Feel free to reach out if you want help getting started: my username @gmail.com

DRM on the filament, so you need to buy their filament? How does that work?

The inside of the roll has an NFC chip in it. The NFC has information on color, amount of filament left, temperature settings etc.

I call it DRM because you can't edit it without a reverse engineered NFC key.

Another side to the DRM thing is that if you use inferior input material and the printer has a quality issue, customers are going to blame the printer and not the filament.

Value added DRM I guess

Can I set up a nfc system like that for iPhone??

I believe iOS11 supports NFC, but it isn't as smooth as tapping and automatically opening the document.

How do you make the roomba cry?

There's a bin full indicator light on the back that turns on when it's full. They don't cry... yet.

Mine plays a sad song when it's full. I think it's the 595?

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