[!NOTE] test The article is about this and that.
Who Doesn’t Like to Tinker
I’m always ashamed to confess that I use LinkedIn. People monetizing (…) unlike me, who only want to monetize my writing. (…)
The thing is, the other day I saw this guy building the Clawdmeter: a tamagotchi that tells you how much of your Claude plan you’ve used and how much you have left.
DEVICE PLUG
Years ago I designed apps in Sketch that I’d like to make, but ever since codingcarlos taught me to make rock-paper-scissors in JavaScript, I haven’t been able to sit down and learn, because… I don’t care. It doesn’t amuse me. I find it interesting on a theoretical level, but I hate writing code. I also hate moving pixels in Figma. What I really enjoy is the process of (…)
I thought about how my childhood dream of making robots has always been just within arm’s reach. I simply threw in the towel when adolescence hit me hard and I failed math. Now that you can talk to computers and ask them for things, the only limits are the plan you can afford, the hardware you can get your hands on, and the environmental impact generated by the provider companies.
Once again I’ll explain that I’ve spent years telling my students to learn to code, but do as I say, not as I do… anyway. Deskilling. It’s important to understand things. I’ve decided to do reverse engineering.
So anyway, when I saw the gadget, I immediately thought: how much does this thing cost? €35 on AliExpress? I’ll take two.
Turns out people who like to tinker are buying devices with this board (ESP32) instead of the typical Raspberry Pi because the market has screwed RAM prices and therefore Pi prices too.
I like to tinker.
I only use Claude at work (Marcos pays for it); at home we use Hermes + OpenRouter (poor man’s Claude), and more often than I’d like I run out of credits and the agent falls back to the dumb model. So I thought: what if I make myself an OpenRouter Clawdmeter?
IMAGEN DEL SALDO DE OPENROUTER
Every time I ask it for a “/goal” I think “is this going to cost €0.02 or €12?” So I put it on my desk while I use the thing (the agent, I mean) to help me draft content or research stuff, and I see whether I need to top up or not.
And hey… maybe it’s useful for something else too.
My Use Case(s)
Besides monitoring my OpenRouter balance, there are little things around the house I could do (and do) with my iPhone, but that I’d like to live “outside the device” — that is, in the place where things happen and without needing to have the device on me — for example:
1. The Electricity Bill
A few months ago we installed solar panels at home. The FusionSolar app tells you how much you produce and how much you consume (total, not just solar), because the panel inverter is connected directly to the breaker box.
When I started tinkering with the Pi and Home Assistant, I thought: surely I can connect to the inverter somehow, and indeed. Now our HA has both production and consumption data, as well as the Tapo H110s that tell you how much the washing machine or dishwasher is consuming.
At home I’m in charge of dishwashers and washing machines, so I thought about installing a screen in the kitchen that would tell me consumption and production in real time to
(…)
(…) I care about form and function, but function only “in principle” and form in detail, let me explain: it doesn’t matter whether you use JS or C, or whether the data goes through HA or not. But
I’ve already talked here about my “one function, one device” philosophy (kale phone / cocaine phone)
(…)
But before spending more money on a gadget I might not use, this is the prototype.
2. Gofio’s Medication
I have a greyhound who’s older than the Sun, and his heart is failing. He’s been on three different medications for a year now, and each box runs out at a different rate. Every few weeks the same thing happens: oh no, only two days of Vetmedin left! If he doesn’t take it, he dies.
I know, we’re going to be fantastic parents.
I thought about making an iPhone app that not only lets me count how many pills I have and when they’ll run out, but also notifies me when there’s a week left before they run out. So I have time to go to the vet, get the prescription, order it from the pharmacy, etc.
BANDEJA DE LAS PASTILLAS
But when I discovered this device, I thought: what if I leave it on the pill tray? Every time I give him his meds, I check in. And yes, the iPhone app is a companion. They sync.
3. Same Thing, but with Coffee
Hey, and since the gadget is already in the kitchen… why not hook it up to nicecup, my coffee app? One of the keys to this app is being able to track what I’m drinking (and let my friends see it, ergo see what they’re drinking) (…)
IMAGEN NICECUP
I had my daughter last June, and when I realised that getting up to turn off the light or the air conditioning while holding her asleep was an absolute ordeal, I went completely psychotic about home automation. Now, two months later, my house (built in 1986) lights up and climate-controls itself magically as you walk through it.
The downstairs, which is the eighth circle of hell, is home to 96 different species of lethal spiders, but upstairs is 1 Apple Park Way.
The thing is, in the middle of that frenzy I bought this Tapo button and was joking around with Carlos about turning it into the “coffee button”. You press it and it logs your last drink. You rotate it and it selects another one of your coffees. But without a screen… no good.
I ended up using it as a switch for the living room’s many lamps, so… the waveshare would be the coffee button. A bit more sophisticated.
Again: one function, one device my ass.
The Process
Grab the Clawdmeter repo and the waveshare docs (…)
I quickly discovered you can’t “install apps” (…)
We built small pieces of software and flashed the gadget. There were several problems you take for granted:
- how do I exit an app?
- how do I turn it off?
- what gestures does this screen support?
It comes with a battery you can attach or not, but the firmware we made doesn’t have a “power off” button afaik. It has 3 physical buttons (and microphones!), so you could do something like the OG iPhone.
As soon as the Pi arrived and I set up HA, connecting the inverter was a piece of cake.
FOTO DEL CONSUMO
Integration with nicecup.
Gofio’s medication notifications in progress.
The Result So Far
Only successful use case: energy consumption. At first I was sceptical, because I thought: a) common sense tells me production hours are always the same and b)
But we got a €90 electricity bill (we’ve been paying €40 tops) and I said: ok, clearly I’m running dishwashers and washing machines before the production peak and/or at the same time, eating up all the production.
Future
Iterations: talking to my wife I understood that the goal (the function) is for it to tell us whether we can run something, what, and when. Not just knowing whether we can. The form only fulfills part of its function.
So I’m making (…)
Design System in Figma…
[!NOTE] Subscribe if you want to know how it ends and for more experiments.
[!NOTE] Editorial brief Idea: the Waveshare ESP32-S3 AMOLED — tinkerers buy it instead of Pis due to the RAM-price crisis. Built a Clawdmeter-for-OpenRouter + use cases (energy, Gofio’s meds, coffee/nicecup). Thesis: deskilling + reverse-engineering what AI builds. Series: part 2 of
home-lab. Status: raw — replace inline markers (DEVICE PLUG / FOTO DEL CONSUMO / BANDEJA / IMAGEN DEL SALDO) with real assets before publishing. 🔵 AI·work·skill.