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I spent about 20 or 25 hours building a website to republish some county data that people frequently check. It's been a big hit with my local friends. Another

by mod 4y ago

I spent about 20 or 25 hours building a website to republish some county data that people frequently check. It's been a big hit with my local friends. Another one I will probably do soon is a script to check weather & water conditions in my area to tell me if it's a good day to go fishing. Namely, I'm going to check the water level of the local river via the USGS, and see if it's within a certain range that are ideal conditions. I think a good value add for me would be some home-automation style voice commands, but with [whatever I dream up] types of outcomes. Like an actually-useful set of commands added to Alexa, let's say.

everforward 4y ago
> I think a good value add for me would be some home-automation style voice commands, but with [whatever I dream up] types of outcomes. Like an actually-useful set of commands added to Alexa, let's say. There are some projects in that space already. Mycroft is one, but it seems slow going and didn't support the 8GB Pi4 when I tried. There was another that just did voice to text and fired webhooks with some of the data; I can't recall the name but it seemed perfect other than needing at least 2 services running (the voice part and your backend). If you mean that you don't want to write the code, I think HomeAssistant has some voice integrations. Haven't tried it though, so I don't know how good they are or what features are available.
gameman144 4y ago
I'm curious what the county data in question is? I'm a big fan of local-government data, so this is a super interesting niche to me.
- mod 4y ago
  I'd rather not mention my county for personal privacy reasons, but I will just say the data in question is arrest/bookings/mugshots. The county uses some really unusable software to manage a "roster" of inmates, and to see arrests you have to catch it before someone is released. Even then, it's just highly difficult to use. Here's a county that isn't mine, using the same software, so you can see what I mean: https://www.dallascountyarsheriff.com/inmate-roster https://www.dallascountyarsheriff.com/inmate-roster People are dropped from the roster immediately upon release. One of the main users of my site is a friend of mine who is the crime editor in the local paper. It helps him to not have to sit and refresh the page all day.

by mod 4y ago

everforward 4y ago

> I think a good value add for me would be some home-automation style voice commands, but with [whatever I dream up] types of outcomes. Like an actually-useful set of commands added to Alexa, let's say. There are some projects in that space already. Mycroft is one, but it seems slow going and didn't support the 8GB Pi4 when I tried. There was another that just did voice to text and fired webhooks with some of the data; I can't recall the name but it seemed perfect other than needing at least 2 services running (the voice part and your backend). If you mean that you don't want to write the code, I think HomeAssistant has some voice integrations. Haven't tried it though, so I don't know how good they are or what features are available.

gameman144 4y ago

I'm curious what the county data in question is? I'm a big fan of local-government data, so this is a super interesting niche to me.

mod 4y ago
I'd rather not mention my county for personal privacy reasons, but I will just say the data in question is arrest/bookings/mugshots. The county uses some really unusable software to manage a "roster" of inmates, and to see arrests you have to catch it before someone is released. Even then, it's just highly difficult to use. Here's a county that isn't mine, using the same software, so you can see what I mean: https://www.dallascountyarsheriff.com/inmate-roster https://www.dallascountyarsheriff.com/inmate-roster People are dropped from the roster immediately upon release. One of the main users of my site is a friend of mine who is the crime editor in the local paper. It helps him to not have to sit and refresh the page all day.