Problem
During my senior year of college, I rented a house with 9 of my best friends. I was the one who put the house together and was given the role of house manager. I knew we’d need a system to ensure our house was well maintained and kept clean, but I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of assigning my friends chores all the time during the school year.
Solution
I wanted to automate and systematize house chores as possible, so during the summer before senior year I came up with this chores bot. I developed a chore assignment and scheduling tool to manage house tasks that sends out individual texts to each person. Every weekend, the bot sends each person their weekly chore, along with instructions on how to complete it.
Later on, I added additional features such as reminders to settle shared expenses at the end of each month, a reporting mechanism for failed tasks, and a party planning tool. I also built a dashboard that tracks completed chores.
I also integrated an old LCD panel I’d harvested from an old laptop back in high school. I connected the screen to the same microcomputer that sent out the chores, and used it to display a “house dashboard” info panel. I built a simple web server and website for the screen to display the time, weather, and the chores schedule. I also added a leaderboard that showed who were the best (and worst) roommates in terms of chore completion and failed tasks.
Tech Stack
Frontend: text messages and display panel
Backend: cron-job-activated Python script + web server running on a microcomputer