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Comment by fzeindl | Hacker News Reader

I wanted a smart thermostat but my 30 year old natural gas heater didn‘t support them. I only had a wheel which I could turn to set the temperature.

So I took double sided tape, stuck a plastic gear on the wheel and put a servo on with another gear on the side, connected to a raspberry pi, that would turn the wheel when my phone would enter a geofence around the flat.

Picture: https://ibb.co/nDvwndp

I even had a bash script to calibrate the servo which would turn the wheel and ask which temperature it set, so it could figure out the step size.

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I've been smartifying dumb devices at home as well and came up with similar rubegoldbergesque solutions, although ultimately I didn't need to actually implement any of these as I found other ways to achieve my goals.

One of them involved pointing an old webcam to a segment display, convert shitty image to monochrome in a way that makes vague shapes for the digits and other state icons but clamps everything else to oblivion, and just use some fixed pixel position to "read" and get device state from that.

Made some fun prototyping though.

Also reminded me of: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/ITAPPMONROBOT

This reminds me of an old Bosch clock I own. This was one of the early electric consumer clocks. It looks very futuristic. But inside, it is simply a mechanical clock with an electric motor attached to the wind-up mechanism. Every few minutes, the motor spins up for a second and winds the clock up again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=0DU0KX9gIk8

The clock is extremely reliable, though. The last batteries lasted for 10 (!) years.

This doesn't really qualify as "stupid" though.

That's just the good old "interfacing with legacy systems" routine. :)

There are whole product ranges for stuff like this now (stuff, where you cannot change the interface that is built for fingers and not automation).

eg:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RJ-zWJcEKc (not affiliated, cheaper models available on aliexpress, both bluetooth and zigbee) - you stick it on somewhere and it pushes a button for you. With added accessories, it can even push (technically pull) the (eg.) light switch the other way, so you only ned one switch per light switch. You can also use it to restart a server/pc, press a tv button remote or even a garage/ramp opener, etc., with zero electronic knowledge and modification (if you're renting out and don't want to replace stuff).

I just took a 24v AC wall wart power supply and shoved it in the same terminals as the hot and neutral control on the smart thermostat. The A in AC makes this arrangement work just fine to allow the battery of the thermostat to charge without zapping anything.

Brilliant

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