My program is called President, it came to me while I was working a front desk job at a college residence. I wanted a simple way to record my transactions, and to know if I was above or below how much I could spend that day. But, I couldn’t motivate myself to write it. Everything seemed really boring. Then it clicked, I am also a guitar player, I may as well make a music player.
So I started there. Music is my credit card. That was three and a half years ago.
Around that time I started drawing. I had a legal matter that was entirely stressful. I won’t go into it. Drawing a new logo, and practicing it over and over, and making word art, imagining one day I would make comedy videos with giant words in between education. Then the drawing turned more into systems designs, and into floorplans, and then into icons. That’s when I started building what I’m presenting here.
At the end of the day, everything you do in a day is an appointment. And just like a song, it has a beginning and an end, so I made walkman controls for them. And it happened in a place, so GPS coordinates are recorded for it. There may also be some media, so you can upload a file, or take a picture, or record a video, scan a document, throw on the webcam, turn on a relay, run a block of code, or maybe put a dollar figure on it… you could automate everything. And you could have it automatically run whenever, and choose which machine it runs on.
I’m writing this in Perl on Manjaro in Mousepad, using SQLite3 as the backend. It doesn’t require the internet to run, but if you have internet, President can automate things from websites, emails, or text messages.
I also have a LilyGo T-Watch S3 attached, so I can control things from my watch. There’s a T-Deck as well for the same remote controls, as well as acting as a mouse and keyboard. For automating passive components (lights, switches, servo motors, relays, buttons, etc) I use the Raspberry Pi Pico 2W.
It’s hard for me to type it out. It’s a lot… and chances are this post will just cause confusion. Ummm… it’s really cool! Hopefully, by the time I’m done it I can write about it without overwhelming myself and readers.
I hope to release v 0.1 in summer of 2028. One day, I want to build smart homes, tiny homes, small yards, and highly affordable. I ended up quitting that job at the front desk, because I had been hired to do maintenance, but it turned out the position didn’t exist. I had just completed a construction certificate at that college, and wanted to develop those skills. So I quit to work on this. Hey, I have a sponsor button on my Github, if you dig this project, can you sponsor me?
Thanks,
Jon
P.S. Yes, Lora is built in to the messaging system.
