[OhSoHumble]

I vibe coded a battery monitor for my wireless mouse. It doesn't have Linux support and I wanted to know when to charge it.

I built an AllTrails equivalent (iOS app and all). It allows me to scan my backpacking gear to load it into a library (with metadata attached), build a weight profile for my trip, has offline maps, and more. I wanted to make something that was more suited to long backpacking trips and will eventually add itinerary planning. I was originally planning on trying to monetize it but I don't know how to sell software and honestly the QA process is so time consuming (hike, fix bugs, hike more, fix those bugs) that I just gave up. I plan on redeploying it to my homelab since I previously ran it on Hetzner.

[mrgaro]

That's so cool. I also thought a bit what it would mean to monetise the checklist/packing list app, but I just don't see much business case with it, with all the QA and support requirements.

[OhSoHumble]

Well, the monetization would be that you would have to have a subscription to use it over a long term - similar to AllTrails. Checklisting/packing/gear tracking was one dimension. The other dimensions would be curated backpacking routes and AI analysis of whether or not you were prepared for your trip.

The idea would be that you would scan all of your gear in and then create a map (or select one) and then Gemini would tell you whether or not you were prepared for that trip - does your sleeping bag insulate well enough, do you have the right shoes, etc. You could even do neat tricks like calculate expected route completing time based on assumed weight. I was also planning a "ask a human" feature that would snapshot all that data and post it to an internal forum.

Ultimately though, outdoor people hate AI (understandably). Selling it as "AI powered" is a no-go.

And I genuinely do not understand how to distribute software. Getting people to use your software is extremely hard unless it is very polished and has no bugs. The feature set was too similar to AllTrails so people will expect AllTrails quality. And something that I'm struggling with for all software that I make is I don't know how to get beta testers to get a better feedback loop. Going "hey my software isn't perfect but can you try it out and let me know what you think" is genuinely met with disdain for bothering the person, apathy, blank stares, or whatever. Doesn't really matter if it's offered for free or not - or even if the person expressed a desire for a solution. A person can say "wow that is a great idea I would love to try that" and I would follow up with them with practically no success.

At the end of the day I think I just want to give up and go back to big tech and optimize ad distribution pipelines to deliver weight loss ads to children or whatever tech is up to these days.