6 ms·

Build Your Own Weasley Location Clock

130 points by randomstring 6y ago

ChuckMcM 6y ago
This is a fun project. It aligns with one of the truisms that I find overlooked by many which is that there is a lot of currently useful information available on the network that isn't visible. 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!
- randomstring 6y ago
  Project creator here.. AMA. 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.
  - crhulls 6y ago
    Hi, CEO of Life360 here - great stuff. If you want to chat more I'm at chris@life360.com
osswid 6y ago
Well done! This must have been a massive project. 1000 hours? Don't miss the project photo album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/7yxiuzpsFReUh5Yy5 https://photos.app.goo.gl/7yxiuzpsFReUh5Yy5
- randomstring 6y ago
  It was a year from idea to finished, installed clock. 1000 hours? Maybe. Yes, if you include time spent worrying about how to make the clock hands look good and stay on.
chickenpotpie 6y ago
Cool project, but please don’t install Life360 on your child’s phone. IMO it really destroys trust with your child. Having Life360 on your phone is a signal among children that your parents are very strict and some consider it a vector for emotional abuse.
- _fzslm 6y ago
  i don't know specifically about Life360 as we use Find My (apple's) in our family, but if everyone in your family trusts each other it can potentially be a life-saver. i've never stalked any of my family using it, i only use it when expecting someone or if it's late and i'm concerned about their wellbeing. i am acutely aware that this is not always the case within families, however.
  - chickenpotpie 6y ago
    Regardless if everyone is using the app 100% consensually, it has some horrible privacy policies. They reserve the right to sell your location data to insurance companies. They can inform your car and health insurance that think you’re not driving safe or going to dangerous areas.
    - _fzslm 6y ago
      yeahhhh, okay that's pretty bad. regardless of apple's privacy policies i'm uncomfortable with giving access to my location to any company, in case interests change. i will definitely consider self-hosting something like owntracks [0] so i'm in control of my data. OP should consider doing the same! (not a shill) [0]: https://owntracks.org https://owntracks.org
    - randomstring 6y ago
      You might not like that the clock shows you to be in "Mortal Peril" when you travel over 75mph. :)
    - lb1lf 6y ago
      -With regards to selling my location info to third parties, I have been fighting an increasingly irresistible urge to set up an old smartphone and an SDR in my basement to see whether they derive the location info from GPS exclusively or if they use cellular info, too. It would be fun to spoof the GPS data to draw all sorts of obscene art for their viewing (dis)pleasure.
nrs26 6y ago
This is very cool. I've been considering doing something similar for my family. Is there a hardware solution (like an open-source GPS-enabled Tile) that you found that could track people's location without installing Life360? I did some cursory research a few months back and couldn't find anything.
- randomstring 6y ago
  As mentioned in other comments here and I discuss in my build log. There's Apple's Find My Phone service, but this is iOS only. The authentication API for Find My Phone changed while I was working on the project and Life360 has really good support in Home Assistant. There's OwnTracks (https://owntracks.org/ 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.
  - oh_sigh 6y ago
    Owntracks works with ios and android, is open source, and you can have it directly connect to a server of your choosing and nothing else. owntracks + mqtt bridge + homeassistant is what i use and it works great(I haven't touched it since I set it up)
    - randomstring 6y ago
      Owntracks is my backup plan. Integration with Home Assistant is a must. 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. :)
thisispete 6y ago
100% expected this to just be a jpg of all the hands pointing to home for corona virus lockdown. built something similar back in '06: http://thisispete.com/weatherclock http://thisispete.com/weatherclock
- randomstring 6y ago
  Cool! I have a collection of related projects here: https://github.com/randomstring/WeasleyClock#related-projects-and-inspiration https://github.com/randomstring/WeasleyClock#related-project... I hadn't seen yours, I'll add it to the list.
damenleeturks 6y ago
Very cool. I'm curious — why didn't you photoshop out the Weasleys locations from the background of your clock face?
- randomstring 6y ago
  I purchased the artwork from Minalima, https://minalima.com/product/the-weasley-family-clock/ https://minalima.com/product/the-weasley-family-clock/ and used that. It's officially licensed artwork. 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.
autumnhope 6y ago
This is absolutely incredible. Totally made my day. SO well done.
xwdv 6y ago
A stalking-free version of this where you could push your state manually to the clock and have it automatically reset to home when your device is detected on the home wifi network would be more fun, and removes a dependency. You could also support more specific states this way that you cannot detect through simple movements. States can also decay to an unknown state if not updated in a while and you never come home. 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.
crhulls 6y ago
Life360 cofounder & CEO here. Great 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-and-protects-your-data/ https://www.life360.com/blog/understanding-how-life360-uses-...
- bhhaskin 6y ago
  But do you sell the data at all? Just because you do not sell the data to insurance companies directly doesn't the data is safe. could easily sell the data to data aggregators who sell to insurance companies.
  - chickenpotpie 6y ago
    "We share your personal information, driving event data and other information to Arity 875, LLC (“Arity”), which provides driving analytics behaviour services to enable us to provide certain functionalities of the Service, such as driving event history. Arity may also use this information to calculate discounts, rewards or pricing offers by third parties such as insurance companies, and to perform various profiling activities in order to produce a score which may predict the level of driver riskiness, and to develop its risk predictive models for its own analytics purposes. You hereby acknowledge and consent to the collection and use of your data and information by Arity as set out in this policy and in Arity’s privacy policy, which is located at https://www.arity.com/privacy." https://www.arity.com/privacy." https://life360.helpshift.com/a/life360-family-locator/?s=privacy-policy-tos&f=full-privacy-policy&l=en&p=web https://life360.helpshift.com/a/life360-family-locator/?s=pr...
    - bhhaskin 6y ago
      Got it. 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.
yummypaint 6y ago
I like this alot. However, you should make sure it isn't visible through a window or it's basically an "all clear" indicator for burglars.
- jedieaston 6y ago
  They'd have to look through the window for quite a while to realize that it wasn't simply a decoration from Harry Potter.

130 points by randomstring 6y ago

This is a fun project. It aligns with one of the truisms that I find overlooked by many which is that there is a lot of currently useful information available on the network that isn't visible. 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!

randomstring 6y ago
Project creator here.. AMA. 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.
- crhulls 6y ago
  Hi, CEO of Life360 here - great stuff. If you want to chat more I'm at chris@life360.com

osswid 6y ago

Well done! This must have been a massive project. 1000 hours? Don't miss the project photo album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/7yxiuzpsFReUh5Yy5 https://photos.app.goo.gl/7yxiuzpsFReUh5Yy5

randomstring 6y ago
It was a year from idea to finished, installed clock. 1000 hours? Maybe. Yes, if you include time spent worrying about how to make the clock hands look good and stay on.

chickenpotpie 6y ago

Cool project, but please don’t install Life360 on your child’s phone. IMO it really destroys trust with your child. Having Life360 on your phone is a signal among children that your parents are very strict and some consider it a vector for emotional abuse.

_fzslm 6y ago
i don't know specifically about Life360 as we use Find My (apple's) in our family, but if everyone in your family trusts each other it can potentially be a life-saver. i've never stalked any of my family using it, i only use it when expecting someone or if it's late and i'm concerned about their wellbeing. i am acutely aware that this is not always the case within families, however.
- chickenpotpie 6y ago
  Regardless if everyone is using the app 100% consensually, it has some horrible privacy policies. They reserve the right to sell your location data to insurance companies. They can inform your car and health insurance that think you’re not driving safe or going to dangerous areas.
  - _fzslm 6y ago
    yeahhhh, okay that's pretty bad. regardless of apple's privacy policies i'm uncomfortable with giving access to my location to any company, in case interests change. i will definitely consider self-hosting something like owntracks [0] so i'm in control of my data. OP should consider doing the same! (not a shill) [0]: https://owntracks.org https://owntracks.org
  - randomstring 6y ago
    You might not like that the clock shows you to be in "Mortal Peril" when you travel over 75mph. :)
  - lb1lf 6y ago
    -With regards to selling my location info to third parties, I have been fighting an increasingly irresistible urge to set up an old smartphone and an SDR in my basement to see whether they derive the location info from GPS exclusively or if they use cellular info, too. It would be fun to spoof the GPS data to draw all sorts of obscene art for their viewing (dis)pleasure.

nrs26 6y ago

This is very cool. I've been considering doing something similar for my family. Is there a hardware solution (like an open-source GPS-enabled Tile) that you found that could track people's location without installing Life360? I did some cursory research a few months back and couldn't find anything.

randomstring 6y ago
As mentioned in other comments here and I discuss in my build log. There's Apple's Find My Phone service, but this is iOS only. The authentication API for Find My Phone changed while I was working on the project and Life360 has really good support in Home Assistant. There's OwnTracks (https://owntracks.org/ 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.
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  Owntracks works with ios and android, is open source, and you can have it directly connect to a server of your choosing and nothing else. owntracks + mqtt bridge + homeassistant is what i use and it works great(I haven't touched it since I set it up)
  - randomstring 6y ago
    Owntracks is my backup plan. Integration with Home Assistant is a must. 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. :)

thisispete 6y ago

100% expected this to just be a jpg of all the hands pointing to home for corona virus lockdown. built something similar back in '06: http://thisispete.com/weatherclock http://thisispete.com/weatherclock

randomstring 6y ago
Cool! I have a collection of related projects here: https://github.com/randomstring/WeasleyClock#related-projects-and-inspiration https://github.com/randomstring/WeasleyClock#related-project... I hadn't seen yours, I'll add it to the list.

damenleeturks 6y ago

Very cool. I'm curious — why didn't you photoshop out the Weasleys locations from the background of your clock face?

randomstring 6y ago
I purchased the artwork from Minalima, https://minalima.com/product/the-weasley-family-clock/ https://minalima.com/product/the-weasley-family-clock/ and used that. It's officially licensed artwork. 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.

autumnhope 6y ago

This is absolutely incredible. Totally made my day. SO well done.

xwdv 6y ago

A stalking-free version of this where you could push your state manually to the clock and have it automatically reset to home when your device is detected on the home wifi network would be more fun, and removes a dependency. You could also support more specific states this way that you cannot detect through simple movements. States can also decay to an unknown state if not updated in a while and you never come home. 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.

crhulls 6y ago

Life360 cofounder & CEO here. Great 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-and-protects-your-data/ https://www.life360.com/blog/understanding-how-life360-uses-...

bhhaskin 6y ago
But do you sell the data at all? Just because you do not sell the data to insurance companies directly doesn't the data is safe. could easily sell the data to data aggregators who sell to insurance companies.
- chickenpotpie 6y ago
  "We share your personal information, driving event data and other information to Arity 875, LLC (“Arity”), which provides driving analytics behaviour services to enable us to provide certain functionalities of the Service, such as driving event history. Arity may also use this information to calculate discounts, rewards or pricing offers by third parties such as insurance companies, and to perform various profiling activities in order to produce a score which may predict the level of driver riskiness, and to develop its risk predictive models for its own analytics purposes. You hereby acknowledge and consent to the collection and use of your data and information by Arity as set out in this policy and in Arity’s privacy policy, which is located at https://www.arity.com/privacy." https://www.arity.com/privacy." https://life360.helpshift.com/a/life360-family-locator/?s=privacy-policy-tos&f=full-privacy-policy&l=en&p=web https://life360.helpshift.com/a/life360-family-locator/?s=pr...
  - bhhaskin 6y ago
    Got it. 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.

yummypaint 6y ago

I like this alot. However, you should make sure it isn't visible through a window or it's basically an "all clear" indicator for burglars.

jedieaston 6y ago
They'd have to look through the window for quite a while to realize that it wasn't simply a decoration from Harry Potter.