This is a great post but allow me to be a little pedantic.
Your example of an interesting problem sounds more to me like an interesting solution. It's the computer vision that's fun, right? Or is it the cat shit?
Interesting problems have interesting solutions. In my mind, it's rare that an interesting problem would have a run-of-the-mill solution, because if it did, you could hire a freelancer off Craigslist for $30 an hour. Interesting problems are rarely ones that can be solved with a Wordpress install, a few plugins, and a downloaded theme derived from Bootstrap.
Boring problems don't usually have interesting solutions. I mean, you could make the solution interesting, you could over-engineer it, or choose to solve it in a novel and unique way, but it is not often that you'll be given that opportunity. Un-interesting problems with un-interesting solutions usually get given to the lowest bidder.
I built a cat toy, it's a 42" LCD screen with a touch interface overlaid on top, and then wrote a "bot" that exhibits prey response and can be "caught" by the cat. Fun project, had to figure out how to do multiple toe bean rejection. And a whole bunch of other tech too.
Built a cat toy, it's a home built 3D printed robot arm, that has a plastic rod as the end effector, with a feather on it, that is radio controlled, and can be controlled via a 3D application running in a web browser.
I built a semi-autonomous, self-driving radio control car that can race a human controlled radio control car, and can also give the human operator a first person view, like a racing drone. It used various solutions from computer vision, low-latency video streaming, low-latency, long-range WiFi, and so forth.
I built a human controlled robot to clean the litter box, which then farms out the job to people on Mechanical Turk.
I built an app that helps you find the jigsaw puzzle piece you want when solving a jigsaw.
I built an app that can scan your Scrabble tiles and the Scrabble board, and tell you which word to play for the most value.
I built a number of bots and assist bots that play a popular MMORPG.
I built a dashboard for my home that tells me what the weather is like, where my cats are, where the family wallets are located, where I left my phone.
I built a resume website with a space invaders game embedded in it.
Plus there are hundreds of other projects. Each one interesting in their own way. But what I studiously do is avoid the CRUD apps that are solved problems.
Currently I am tinkering with a Star Trek Picard-like, flight deck transparent "holographic", curved display with head/eye tracking and touch interface. I am also building, as my day job, a computer vision solution that will do full body and face tracking for a new VR HMD.
Boring problems don't usually have interesting solutions. I mean, you could make the solution interesting, you could over-engineer it, or choose to solve it in a novel and unique way, but it is not often that you'll be given that opportunity. Un-interesting problems with un-interesting solutions usually get given to the lowest bidder.
I built a cat toy, it's a 42" LCD screen with a touch interface overlaid on top, and then wrote a "bot" that exhibits prey response and can be "caught" by the cat. Fun project, had to figure out how to do multiple toe bean rejection. And a whole bunch of other tech too.
Built a cat toy, it's a home built 3D printed robot arm, that has a plastic rod as the end effector, with a feather on it, that is radio controlled, and can be controlled via a 3D application running in a web browser.
I built a semi-autonomous, self-driving radio control car that can race a human controlled radio control car, and can also give the human operator a first person view, like a racing drone. It used various solutions from computer vision, low-latency video streaming, low-latency, long-range WiFi, and so forth.
I built a human controlled robot to clean the litter box, which then farms out the job to people on Mechanical Turk.
I built an app that helps you find the jigsaw puzzle piece you want when solving a jigsaw.
I built an app that can scan your Scrabble tiles and the Scrabble board, and tell you which word to play for the most value.
I built a number of bots and assist bots that play a popular MMORPG.
I built a dashboard for my home that tells me what the weather is like, where my cats are, where the family wallets are located, where I left my phone.
I built a resume website with a space invaders game embedded in it.
Plus there are hundreds of other projects. Each one interesting in their own way. But what I studiously do is avoid the CRUD apps that are solved problems.
Currently I am tinkering with a Star Trek Picard-like, flight deck transparent "holographic", curved display with head/eye tracking and touch interface. I am also building, as my day job, a computer vision solution that will do full body and face tracking for a new VR HMD.
But yeah, the cat shit was kinda interesting.