Show HN: I built an Open Source screen timer for the m5stickc (Arduino)

Summary

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 TL;DR: I built a screen-timer device & web app — see a video of it here Introduction I love a good coding side-project in the holidays. (sound the nerd klaxon 📣) It’s fun to solve problems and learn new systems in a more relaxed environment where a couple of beers and a bit of YOLO refactoring are actively encouraged. And, of course, a suitable excuse for playing with new shiny things. The screen time conundrum It’s a been a fun Christmas, but there have been some interesting challenges. Our two children (age 11 and 13) get a screen time allowance each day – and they want to share it across multiple devices. Getting the various parental control systems (iOS, MacOS, Family Link, Nintendo and PS5) to sync nicely with each other is impossible, and manually moving around the screen time limits (“Dad, can I have my Nintendo time on the iPad?”) was causing stress and taking up far too much of my life. After giving the problem some thought, and conducting thorough interviews with the stakeholders 😉, my key insight was that this isn’t a trust problem. Our kids are reasonably compliant with screen time rules; they’ve had plenty of school lessons around device addiction and healthy lifestyles. The real challenge is around accurate measurement – after our son has been lost in a Fortnite wormhole, his estimation of ‘time spent’ is hilariously bad. His shock and denial when confronted with the truth mirrors that of most adults when their phone’s monthly screen time summary pops up! Another challenge is over-reliance on this whole ‘sync then shutdown’ approach for automatic enforcement – to date, the kids have been relying on these built-in controls to automatically disable their devices when ‘time’s up’. Not only does this make them dependent on this feature (ie it shifts accountability), it’s also proving unrealistic to implement across so many platforms. A radical solution? I propose that we try something a bit different – remove the enforceme...