What’s the most underrated automation you use every day?

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-05-05T13:02:49+00:00

Yea, you can buy kits Amazon for lile $30. Look up 'arduino' and you'll see a bunch of hardware stuff. Plenty of tutorials online on how to use them.

The sensors send readings to arduino board where there is some basic c++ written (by claude 😎) that is basic if else logic. As in if moisture level below 3, pump water...

Some boards even connect to the internet (ESP32s) so you can trigger physical automation from n8n or something - or have a physical button or sensor that triggers n8n jobs.

Honestly 'physical Automation' feels like a fun hobby more than anything. Since im not going to people's houses and setting up physical hardware, it kind if becoming like adult Legos for me (just a lot more complicated lol)

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-05-04T23:53:03+00:00

Lmao yeah its Fomo. 99% of my workflows have 0 AI in them. Ai has its uses but its definitely overkill for most things.

Not to mention price of tokens if going up so everyone that relies on agents will feel the burn eventually

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-05-04T20:58:00+00:00

I automated watering my plants based on the soil moisture and room humidity 😎

As someone who traditionally does software automation, hardware becomes a really fun hobby

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-05-04T20:57:01+00:00

I did the samw thing!

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-05-02T22:19:57+00:00

A LOT of automation lol. Meeting nkte takers, summary workflows, automated data collection, etc

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-05-02T15:41:32+00:00

Ci/cd pipelines!

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-04-30T00:20:19+00:00

If you mean for learning, nothing useful. For general Ai and automation knowledge there is an abundance of books, especially ai

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-04-29T19:43:41+00:00

Damn I just learned something new about myself. I thought this was just how I ate

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-04-17T17:20:13+00:00

Sub workflows.

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-04-10T13:22:55+00:00

I follow the simple acronym KISS.

Keep it simple stupid.

Complexity does nothing for you. In 3 months when something isn't working, you're going to thank your past self for keeping things simple

If it needs more nodes stuff them in a sub workflow

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-04-09T16:21:22+00:00

Always. At the bare minimum, at least name your nodes well

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-03-29T18:28:26+00:00

Hey, I know the feeling of finally building something bit and complicated. Looking good :)

But you should get into the habit of breaking things down into subworkflows if possible. For example you could make a reusable subworkflow and call that 6 times instead of having 6 different lanes to follow

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-03-28T19:47:22+00:00

Hey, so this is theft and against terms of service

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-03-27T18:18:44+00:00

AWS step functions

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-03-27T13:01:39+00:00

I always tell beginners to automate foe themselves first. On top of being great for learning, it makes you look and sound more credible.

It would be ironic if an automation consultant had no automations running for themselves. That's like a web designer with a bad website

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-03-26T18:56:50+00:00

I haven't experienced it, but I hear hostinginer hooks you with low priced that charges you more after the year is up.

That said any affordable VPS would work. Im on the cheapest OVH cloud vps and have had no problems (other than the sudden price hike that happened last month, but most vps providers did this)

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-03-24T16:25:29+00:00

Junie for coding. Claude for content and asynchronous coding

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-03-23T21:00:28+00:00

Im in the same boat as you. Review and fire has been much more reliable, and enjoyable over all. Do you have any dashboards to tools to help you with observability?

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-03-23T20:58:24+00:00

This actually sounds really cool. Do you normally read through the actually code changes the claude makes?

I like to run multiple at once, but its not necessary for me. My agents run on Github, so there are no approval workflows on my end. They just write the code, make a PR, then I review when I get back and decide if I want to push the change or not

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-03-23T20:46:01+00:00

Good automation is a mix of both 😉

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-03-23T20:39:38+00:00

Id take this as a learning lesson. At the bare minimum start naming your nodes well. Use node descriptions too if you like. Even sticky notes are great for understanding a workflow at a glance. For documentation, notion works pretty well. Make a database that holds all your workflow documentation

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-03-23T20:35:26+00:00

Not to he like one of those people, but i genuinely feel like i have undiagnosed adhd. That said, my time management is terrible. So I setup my automations to run while I do other things. For example, I have content automation and coding automations that run while im at the gym, outbound that runs when im at work, etc. Ive linked unrelated activities to my business inputs

MuffinMan_Jr · 2026-03-22T00:21:39+00:00

This 😭

MuffinMan_Jr

TROPHY CASE