LifeOS - Introduction

A while ago, I made an application for my family to manage our things, the boxes they were in, and the boxes’ locations in our house. Then, I added the ability for my spouse to log their chronic pain. And then, I added a way to see a dashboard on my desk.

It quickly became the application that I put everything in, not just for things to help us manage our lives but also for me to test out new technologies. I'm rewriting it to add new features and play with Flux UI.

This app’s original version was called Hootie, and you can check out the code on GitHub. It was primarily built with Filament but also had some Volt and Folio parts. Hootie references a character in The Owl House, a recent Disney Channel show that my spouse and I adore! Hootie has the voice of a demonic Mickey Mouse, which is fitting since he is a house demon who protects the Owl House and its inhabitants. Maybe this app didn’t fight an army of invaders off like the real Hootie, but it did tell us what we could expect for a day and where our junk was, and it always put a smile on my face since the name was so silly.

Fast-forward to now. Like most developers I know tend to do, I’m about to rebuild this app entirely. Partially to make the code cleaner and mostly to play with the newly available Flux UI. This new version will add many features we have wanted in Hootie.

Right now, I’m downright obsessed with One Piece, and the crew’s current ship and home is called the Thousand Sunny, or “Sunny” for short, so that’s what I’m using as inspiration for the new version of my family’s LifeOS.

Features

• Inventory

• Delta

• Status

• Log Pose

• Berries

We’re not going to change much about this feature. Currently, there are three models: Thing, Bin, and Location. They work well for us and our neurodivergent brains. A thing is any physical object that we have in our home. A bin is versatile enough to mean a plastic bin or a bookshelf. Location is usually a room in our house, but there are a couple of exceptions, which is why I prefer the name “Location” to “Room.”

This feature’s name comes from the definition of delta: a difference between two things or values. The name is particularly fitting because my spouse’s chronic pain seems tied to changes in the weather or atmospheric pressure. This feature in Hootie was data points Ashar logged with how they felt every day. Widailpoint, I grabbed the weather for the current and previous days so we could theoretically use the data to find patterns. It also had a very basic prediction system, but we’ve noticed it isn’t accurate, so we’re scrapping that for the next version. Ash also wants a way to log their asthma symptoms and what remedies they’ve used.

Statuses are the most recent feature I’ve added to Hootie, which has been so helpful that even Ash is using it for themselves now. At its core, it’s a simple string added to the user model and the ability to update it, but functionally, it’s been super helpful to know what each other is up to. It’s been beneficial for Ashar so they know if I’m in a meeting and what kind of meeting it is. It’s been helpful for me to know what Ash is up to and if they’re outside of a focus flow for us to talk.

In One Piece, A Log Pose is a specialized type of compass necessary for navigating the Grand Line. It’s nice to have something point you in the right direction, and in the real world, a screen with informative tiles can do just that.

I have a Raspberry Pi with a 10-inch screen that lives under my primary monitor. It’s super helpful since it has the current time, weather, and my and Ashar’s calendars. Before Hootie, I had an app that used Spatie’s laravel-dashboard package, and it was great. For Hootie, I wanted to try controlling the dashboard from the app’s UI instead of the code. I think it works, but I want to go back to Spatie’s package for the next version of this app because it’s simpler to manage. I also want to add some new tiles, such as the ability to see all my coworkers’ current times and the status of Ashar and me.

Ian Landsman will hate this feature, but like Aaron, I’m adding money management to this app and naming it after the currency used in One Piece. Ashar and I have tried Mint and YNAB, which don’t work well for us. Ashar loves a spreadsheet, and I don’t, so maybe this will be a good compromise. I’m still not sure what this feature will look like, but unlike many other money management systems, it needs to be a manual process so we can get a better handle on where our money is going.

Wrapping Up

I’m excited to build this app again and play with Flux UI. I plan to make each feature a post or a video so you can follow along with the progress.