Build Your Own Weasley Location Clock
github.com
github.com
I have always thought it would be fun to build something like this but send it package tracking numbers and have the hands indicate where the packages I had sent or had been shipped to me were in the system. Just with a glance up at the wall!
The hands don't just show the person's state. When "In Transit" the hand position in the sector shows their distance from home. At a glance you can tell if they are close to home, in town, or across the country. Using a logarithmic scale to give more resolution for points closer to home.
Depending on where your hand is in the "Home" sector indicates what part of the house you're in.
This provides location information on people, without feeling like a violation of their privacy.
built something similar back in '06: http://thisispete.com/weatherclock
I have a collection of related projects here: https://github.com/randomstring/WeasleyClock#related-project...
I hadn't seen yours, I'll add it to the list.
i am acutely aware that this is not always the case within families, however.
It would be fun to spoof the GPS data to draw all sorts of obscene art for their viewing (dis)pleasure.
See blog post here https://www.life360.com/blog/understanding-how-life360-uses-...
Modeling appropriate use of technology and privileges is an important lesson that needs be taught (and practiced). Lessons that translate to being an admin on a minecraft server or having root access on a system.
When I first installed Life360 my son was using it to track me. He made some comment one day about how he saw where I'd gone for lunch. He'd been checking up on me. Since then, he's become bored stalking his family. With shelter-in-place in effect no one goes anywhere anyway.
Plus, it'll help make them tracking savvy and teach them young they need to be aware of this and learn how to deal with them. It has become one of those constant things in today's society.
not quite the same, but this reminds me of a conversation I recently had with my parents. they were fairly strict when I was a kid, and I was asking them as an adult why they were like that. they told me that they expected me to break the rules and considered it a healthy part of growing up. they set the rules conservatively so I wouldn't need to do anything terribly unsafe just to rebel.
To then find out that a) the rules were placed to control you and not necessarily protect you, and b) they didn't trust you not to break them, and c) they wouldn't follow these rules themselves....
...that surely leads to some serious implications in how you view society if the only definitions of rules you've experienced are seen as temporary barriers to getting what you want
90%+ of families have no issues and use it in healthy ways. We are going to try to help that remaining 10%
https://www.tiktok.com/@life360ceo/video/6827231499293576454
There's OwnTracks (https://owntracks.org/) and Google location services. I didn't try those.
I opted for Life360 because it's supported on iPhone and Android and I just wanted the location data to "just work." I had enough technical hurdles, I didn't want to add debugging why someone's phone stopped sending location updates.
There's a little backstory to choosing Life360. The clock was a surprise for my wife and I needed to get her to willingly install and run a tracking app on her phone. A "Family Safety" app was an easier sell than a more abstract home automation integration. :)
To address some other comments on the thread: 1) We don't sell your data to insurance companies
2) We are ultra-transparent on how we handle your data and give far more control than almost any other app out there. More here: https://www.life360.com/blog/understanding-how-life360-uses-...
https://life360.helpshift.com/a/life360-family-locator/?s=pr...
EDIT: my tone wasn't good here. Assuming good intentions. I am leaving the original below just so people can see what the replies where to.
Original: Got It. So the above is a flat out lie.
Arity (an Allstate subsidiary) provides us tech that powers our crash detection service (think Onstar for your phone - we dispatched 10k ambulances last year) and other driving features. Arity also scores our drivers, like a credit score for your driving. But, this is extremely different than selling your data.
Arity does not know who these people are - they get a set of limited information which is not tied to an indvidual. They then take that information and match it with insurance offers based on a number of factors, but who that person is, or there forward looking behavior is never connected back. They don't have the legal right (or even the reasonable technical ability based on the data we give them) and the offers are not tied to an individual.
The insurance offers are similar to what Credit Karma does with your credit score. You go to Credit Karma, you give them your social and some seriously sensitive info, and then they match you with offers. They are NOT selling your info to credit card companies in the same way we are not selling your info to insurance companies. There is very little difference.
To the technical piece, I guess they could theoretically reverse engineer people from our data, but that is like say anyone who uses say Amplitude or some metrics provider could be selling your data to insurance companies. All of us developers use a number of 3rd party services that we are trusting to be shepherds of private information. In this case one of our third party providers is an insurer. So you could argue they have more incentive to breach to contract, but they would really get no benefit from that because a) we would sue the to oblivion and b) do you really think they could get insurance commissioners to allow them to price on stolen data?
As mentioned above we are extremely transparent about all this. It is explained at sign up. We push the information to our users. We give them a privacy center which goes through all of this in non-legalese. User can opt out of anything they want and we don't degrade the service intentionally (e.g. if you opt out of the connection to Arity we literally can't power the features). We even let free users opt out of the targeted promotions.
Some people may still not like this but we do not do corporate speak and we do not try to hide anything.
Privacy means different things to different people and I probably am more open than he average person on hacker news. A full comment on what it personally means to me would be quite a long essay!
And it would be better for building any kind of trust in a child, as they would know you are trusting them to tell you where they might be, and gives a character-building opportunity to choose between lying or telling the truth. Without those opportunities, you never learn the satisfaction of telling the truth, only the satisfaction of lying to get your way when you are not trusted. Inevitably, you become a vicious liar with no limit, and you will lie to everyone: Your parents, your spouse, your mistress, your children, and worst of all yourself.
State can be pushed to an SMS number powered by Twilio.
Don't miss the project photo album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/7yxiuzpsFReUh5Yy5
I consider the background a feature as it is intended to also be a Harry Potter "artifact."
Others have done custom artwork or made copies of official images (there are two variants that appear in the Harry Potter movies). I really liked this artwork, so that's what I did.