Any idea for a self hosted home maintenance reminder system? Essentially something that will have reminders for things that reoccur regularly either ie yearly, monthly etc. Ideally it would have some way of checking it off to show the task was completed and then it would reoccur at the preset time next month /year etc.
I use a DAV integration to show a bunch of shared calendars and task lists (nextcloud, but I guess you can find a Google alternative if needed)
Events: stuff like doctors appointments, bdays, etc.
Maintenance: stuff to do/fix. Some are recurring events (like cleaning faucet aerators, aircon filters, etc)
Shopping: separate from HAs shopping list, this one is for stuff that might be handy to get, but not a priority (not groceries, but stuff like idk a new potato peeler)
On my main dashboard I have atomic calendar revive card from HACS with “upcoming events” as the default view
I want this for cleaning my house. When did I last clean my dish washer, the lamps etc. It’s on my TODO to create when I have time.
Like, a calendar app?
I use Vikunja for that. Recurring reminders, CalDAV, email reminders if missed, and more
I use chore-helper for Home Assistant for that. I chose it because I like the “after x days” vs. the classic “every x days” approach. If I forgot to clean the shower for over a week there is no point to have a reminder the next day after I finally did it, but I want it to happen x days later no matter how long I dragged the previous task.
It hasn’t received updates in ages though and can be quite slow and complicated to manage. I want to have a look in ChoreOps to replace it.
Thats an excellent feature, thanks for the suggestion!
I was going to say there are multiple addons for home assistant for this problem. I think even more than you listed here, HACS is in desperate need of some kind of organization system.
You could uh… Hang a calendar on your fridge?
I’ve got an old slate that school marms used to hand out to their students to do their schoolwork on.
I probably wouldn’t use something specialized to home maintenance. Just any todo/task management system that lets you have a recurring task to tick off. There are tons of those out there.
Personally, I use repeated tasks in org-agenda in emacs for most of this, but I wouldn’t recommend picking up emacs simply to use org-agenda. But if you are an emacs user, then it might be a good option.
I haven’t used Taskwarrior myself, but I’ve seen a few people recommend it for Linux use, and if I weren’t using an emacs-oriented system, I’d probably look into it. It supports recurring tasks.
I am one of those happy taskwarrior users. For more advanced recurrence syntax in taskwarrior there’s also the relatively new nautical extension. It essentially splits recurrence into things that recur based on calendar/clock events (e.g. every first workday of the month, every second Sunday, etc.) or based on previous completions (e.g. do something 3 days after last time, or every x hours after last doing it).
It’s pretty neat and functional but, fair warning, also early on in development and changing quite radically through its versions still.
I use taskwarrior for this. For example:
task add recur:monthly due:eom wait:due-3weeks clean mesh filter task add recur:quarterly due:eoq wait:due-3weeks replace charcoal filterThere are quite a few web frontends to it too, although I haven’t tried these out so not sure which to recommend.
Thanks!
A ton of smart buttons. Every time you do the task you push the button and a time helper is updated to the next date. If today is beyond that date, update a second boolean helper to show the task must be again!
Bonus if you set a light or alarm to go off of you forget to do it or a reward dispenser to drop treats when you complete the task!
Vikunja will cover all the bases you’re looking for I think! I’ve really been enjoying it
I have a router with a few cronjobs like this:
# m h dom mon dow command 00 20 12 * * echo "check bank transactions (monthly reminder)" 00 19 15-21 * * test $(date +\%u) -eq 6 && echo "Anki learning reminder"Cron will by default send an email with the script output. So you “just” need a non-broken email setup that forwards system emails to your main account. (Assuming you don’t self-host email too.)
This setup is useful because I have a few other cronjobs (backup scripts, and a health check for my own application) that should notify me in case of failure, and I would eventually notice that this is broken by noticing that those “calendar” emails no longer get through.
Many selfhosted project planning tools have those features. Personally I have set up Vikunja.
I also recommend Vikunja. You can store instructions with the task.
- Unlike Grocy, it supports due dates based off the last completion date for tasks such as “mow the lawn within 2 weeks of last mowing.”
- However, it doesn’t have task completion history like Grocy.
Have you seen grocy, that I think has something similar?
No but it seems perfect with the chores section. Thanks!
I’ve got Grocy set up with Barcode Buddy for my pantry. When I bring staples in from the store, I scan them into the pantry. I have a scanner set up at the pantry for convenience. Then when you consume a product, you scan it out of inventory via a scanner in the kitchen. That way, if I am grocery shopping, and there is a killer deal on a 100 lb sack of rice, sugar, flour, etc, I can check inventory and see if I need to restock. It’s very handy and there are other aspects of Grocy, but I only use it for the pantry.
I was thinking about making something like this actually.
I’m just getting into self hosting some things so I’ll see what I can come up with in the next few months.
Were you thinking like a web app that is basically a reoccurring to-do list, but it’s more maintenance focused?
I built a similar app for Android, but it’s limitedvright now, mostly a to-do list with a due date, no reoccurring, and no notifications.
Web app is probably best. That makes it easy to share with other members in the family so anyone can check off a task once done. Also having tasks pile up when they are not done is also very useful so you can see the backlog. It’s close to a calendar app but not quite optimized for something like this.
Ideally tasks could have a description section that explains how to do it, like flushing the water heater could have be exact steps written for the heater tank that you have specifically avoiding the need to keep looking it up every year.
There are several good webapps like this already, but they all are paid and locked in to their platform.
This would actually be an awesome feature request for homebox.
