speckles-the-chore-mouse

Automate chores for 4 or more people by interacting with Speckles The Chore Mouse via email!

Instructions

General Use Instructions

If you completed a chore

Send a message to Speckles via email with the word "Yes" in it.

If you want your chore reassigned to someone else

Send a message to Speckles via email with the word "pass" in it.

Special Use: Override

If you did someone else's chore or you want to reassign someone else's chore, you can use override.

If you did someone else's chore

Create a new email to speckles with the word "override" in the email title Then type "yes" and the chore type. So if the chore was "bathroom", you would type "yes bathroom" in the email text.

If you want to reassign someone else's chore

Create a new email to speckles with the word "override" in the email title Then type "pass" and the chore type. So if the chore was "bathroom", you would type "pass bathroom" in the email text.

Frequently Asked Questions:

How often does it send out emails?

Speckles checks mail multiple times a day using crontab on a Raspberry Pi.

Speckles didn't respond, what do I do?

You may need to wait! If you still don't get a response, check your email carefully to make sure your response is typed exactly!

How to host Speckles in your home: Raspberry Pi Wireless Zero W Instructions

Speckles works well when loaded onto a Raspberry Pi Wireless Zero W connected to your local network.

Plug in your raspberry pi with a fresh install of raspbian.

Login to your Raspberry Pi From your Computer

Ssh into your raspberry pi from your computer while connected to your local wifi.

ssh pi@raspberrypi.local

(default password is "raspberry" - make sure to change it to a strong password since we will be storing email credentials on the machine using the passwd command)

Install Git and Clone Repo

sudo apt-get install git

git clone https://github.com/rwhalley/speckles-the-chore-mouse

Install Python Package Manager and Setup a Virtual Environment

sudo apt install python3-pip

pip3 install virtualenv

export PATH="/home/pi/.local/bin:$PATH"

speckles-the-chore-mouse $ virtualenv specklesvenv

speckles-the-chore-mouse/specklesenv $ source bin/activate

Install dependencies for Speckles

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Configure Speckes

Use vi to fill out email_creds.csv, chores.csv, participants.csv

Or if you don't like using vi, magic-wormhole the files from your computer's local terminal to your ssh terminal :)

sudo apt-get install magic-wormhole

wormhole send email_creds.csv (on computer's local terminal)

wormhole receive (on your ssh terminal)

Setup Crontab

Crontab allows Speckles to check the mail periodically every day:

crontab -e

The following will run the script once every 10 minutes:

*/10 * * * * /usr/bin/python ~Code/speckles-the-chore-mouse/main.py

The following will run the script once daily:

@daily python /home/pi/speckles-the-chore-mouse/main.py

Note: that you may need to activate a virtual environment first, so you may want to consider first creating a bash script, say, bash_run.sh with the following content:

Navigate to code folder:

cd ~/Code/speckles-the-chore-mouse

Activate virtual environment:

source specklesenv/bin/activate

Run program:

python3 main.py

And then, in your crontab, just run the bash file:

*/10 * * * * ~/Code/speckles-the-chore-mouse/bash_run.sh

Congrats! You are now running speckles on a raspberry pi!

Debugging

Sometimes, Numpy does not install correctly using raspberry pi using Pip3.

In that case, check the instructions on this website on how to resolve it:

Numpy Raspberry Pi Troubleshooting Website

I've found that installing the missing libraries does the trick:

sudo apt-get install libatlas-base-dev