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

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 https://thedailywtf.com/articles/ITAPPMONROBOT