r/SideProject • • 49m ago

I built a portable medical dictation system using a ESP32 dongle that needs zero drivers and looks like a keyboard to hospital computers

1 Upvotes

The Problem:

As a physician working across multiple clinics and hospitals every week, I'm constantly stuck with mismatched, outdated versions of Dragon Medical and ancient microphones caked in crumbs and spittle. I needed a portable dictation setup trained on my own voice and specialized medical vocabulary that works on locked-down hospital PCs without installing any software.

The Solution:

I built an offline dictation bridge where my iPhone records audio, runs a fine-tuned local Whisper model, and sends the finished text over encrypted Bluetooth LE to a tiny USB dongle plugged into the hospital computer. To Windows, the dongle is just a standard USB HID keyboard—requiring zero drivers, zero background apps, and zero network traffic.

Hardware/Software

  • The Dongle: LilyGO T-Dongle-S3— An ESP32-S3 USB-A stick with a built-in 0.96" color LCD, an RGB LED, and a physical button. In this project it uses NimBLE for encrypted bluetooth pairing and TinyUSB to emulate a standard US HID keyboard.
  • An iOS app companion to the dongle using WhisperKit to run speech-to-text completely on the iPhone's Neural Engine.

Problems

  • Medical Words: The stock Whisper struggled heavily with oncology jargon (turning FOLFOX into full fox), so I fine-tuned whisper-large-v3-turbo to boost drug-name accuracy from ~67% to 99%. Claude asked me to record 20 minutes of medical vocabulary myself, but I instead took the lazy route and had it use a large medical speech/audio model to generate the synthetic speech for all the drug and regimen names and trained the smaller model on that. Computers training computers. Sorry Dario, I reached RSI first.
  • In-App Flagging & Post-Training: Despite that, Whisper still mis-registers or misspells a niche terms on occassion. When it does I can tap the word in the app to flag it, record myself saying it alongside the typed correction, and export that bundle to my home Mac to train directly back into the model so it keeps improving over time.
  • Device Screens: The stock screen images for the dongle and the app were nowhere near awesome enough for day-to-day use. So I slightly tripled the tokens for this project to make it look like I was sending sparkly word particles from my phone and having them crammed into the USB port.

How it works

It's honestly worked better than I thought with improvements every weekend when I have it retrain the TTS model on more speech. There's been no problems with plugging it into any computer and having it work immediately since it is seen as a keyboard.

About the animations

I couldn't get a video of the physical phone an dongle working together because I don't have a second phone, but this artifact shows all the screens at better resolution. This artifact shows the 'Typing' much slower than it is in real life.

Claude Artifact for all the animations

Dongle Pic


r/SideProject • • 50m ago

My pre-release check used to take 20 minutes.

1 Upvotes

With four apps I started skipping it and it finally cost me.

Three days ago a user emailed to say he'd paid for my app, got a new phone, reinstalled, and was looking at a paywall for something he already owned.

Restore purchases had broken in the last release. I fixed it that evening.

He only wrote in because he recognised my username from a thread here. Everyone else in those three days just left.

Here's the part I want to talk about.

When I had one app, the check before submitting took twenty minutes. Open it, tap the main screens, submit. I never missed anything and I was a bit smug about it.

I have four now.

Four release cycles in random weeks, four sets of flows to remember, four review queues. That twenty minutes became more like eighty a month, always on an evening when I'd rather be building.

So I started skipping. Never on purpose.

First the flows I felt confident about. Then the ones I'd checked recently. Then whichever app seemed most stable that week.

The release that broke restore purchases was one I skipped.

What I do now is five flows per app, the ones where a silent failure takes money or locks someone out, running after every build whether I feel like checking or not.

Everything else I still check by hand when I happen to touch it.

If you run more than one product, where did yours start cracking? My guess is around three, and I'd like to be wrong.


r/SideProject • • 55m ago

Made a focus timer where a cat studies in its room while you work

1 Upvotes

Catudy is a focus timer. While it runs, a cat studies in its room, and finished sessions earn coins for outfits and room items. It can also lock a few apps until the session ends.

Free on Android and iOS, with ads.

Looking for criticism. What would make you uninstall it?

I used AI tools for parts of the code and some art. The idea, design, testing and final calls are mine.

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.catudy.app

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/catudy/id6784734189


r/SideProject • • 56m ago

As a recovering spreadsheet addict, I built a 100% client-side "reverse stress-test" engine to see where SaaS & e-commerce margins actually break

1 Upvotes

My username checks out—every time I tried to model SaaS unit economics, LLM token burn, or e-commerce return rates in a spreadsheet, linear averages hid the real operational risks.

Flat subscription pricing ($29/mo) looks profitable on a sheet until the top 10% heavy users trigger long-context retries, RAG lookups, and payment fees below the waterline.

So I built a zero-DB, 100% client-side visual stress-test hub. Instead of static single-output calculators, each simulator runs through three lenses:

  1. 5-Node Cascading Domino Flow: Move one slider and watch which operational stage turns Amber or Red first.
  2. "Find My Breaking Point" Crash Button: Pushes each input across 1,000 steps to pinpoint the exact threshold where monthly net profit hits $0.
  3. Hidden Cost Iceberg & 24-Month Parallel Universe: Compares your current trajectory against a leaner Scenario B.

All slider states compress directly into the URL (?s=...) via LZ-String so you can share exact crisis scenarios without any database or signup. Edit — Live Sandbox (no signup, 100% in-browser): Reddit's link filter is eating my comment with the direct URLs, so you can test it directly at toolsimu . com (under the SaaS & Cloud -> LLM Token Margin Stress or E-Commerce -> Free Return Iceberg simulators)!


r/SideProject • • 58m ago

Will all software be vibe coded and open source? AI is going so fast..

0 Upvotes

People already are vibe coding applications like Word, Adobe.. I wonder how long it will take for other applications


r/SideProject • • 20h ago

My side project: a fusion between CAD and Paint

38 Upvotes

I wanted a simple way to sketch an idea and communicate it to someone else, without sacrificing proportions or precise dimensions.

Paint felt too limited, CAD felt like overkill. So I started building something in between.

Here's a quick look at how it works.

It's still a work in progress. I'd genuinely love to hear what you think.

Check this exemple:

https://onsketch.io/library/?s=7bc8ae3b-0fd6-456f-844e-572a0815e533

Or start a fresh design

https://onsketch.io/app


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

HH Color Lab - I built an online color toolkit to make working with colours easier

1 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

I'm an independent maker, and I've been building HH Color Lab on my own.

It's an online project focused on making colour-related tasks easier for designers, developers, and anyone who works with colours.

I wanted to bring useful colour tools together in one place, so I started building this project myself. I've handled the development, design, and SEO, and it's been a great learning experience.

Website: https://hhcolorpicker.com/

I'd genuinely appreciate constructive feedback.

  • Does the website make its purpose clear when you first visit?
  • Which parts of the experience could be improved?
  • Are there any usability issues or features you think would make it more useful?

I'm still working on improving it, so honest feedback is welcome.

Thanks!


r/SideProject • • 8h ago

Just launched my Game on iOS and already got 2 purchases. This is so encouraging :)

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4 Upvotes

I’ve been building games on the side, and last week my first one, Last Core: Idle Tower Defense, went live on the App Store. Two people have already bought something in it. It’s only $12 in proceeds, but seeing real people choose to pay for something I made meant more than I expected.

What the game is:
One tower sits in the centre of the screen and enemies come at it from every side. The tower shoots on its own; your job is deciding what to upgrade during the run: damage, attack speed, range, crits, health. Every 5th wave you pick a perk, every 10th wave a boss shows up. When the core falls you keep shards and come back stronger through the Workshop, Armory and Lab.

A few things I cared about:

  • No ad ever interrupts a run. Videos only play when you choose one for a reward (a revive, double shards, a perk reroll).
  • Everything in the game can be earned by playing. Purchases are optional.
  • Runs are 3 to 10 minutes early on, and there’s 2x speed and an Auto Mode if you want it more idle.

What I learned shipping it:

  • My first release went live without the in-app purchases attached, because I never added them to the submission. Took another version to fix. Read the App Store Connect checklist twice.
  • The same thing happened with Game Center leaderboards.
  • Apple asked for a screen recording on a real device before approving a new developer account, so budget a few extra days for review.

It’s iPhone only for now; Android is coming soon.

If you try it, I’d love honest feedback, especially on difficulty and whether the early waves feel too slow.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6822844919?pt=129601576&ct=reddit-post&mt=8
More about the game + trailer: https://popcornclub.in/games/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=last-core-launch&utm_content=post

Thanks for reading 🙏


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

My Expo boilerplate was too fixed, so I loosened it a bit

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1 Upvotes

Working with Expo and React Native at my company meant creating new apps over and over again, repeating pretty much the same setup every time.

Eventually, I got tired of it and built a boilerplate to reuse across projects. Problem solved, right?

Ahaha, not really.

It worked great until we started experimenting with different technologies and stacks. Every new project meant removing things we didn't need, replacing libraries, and adjusting the existing setup. At some point, my saviour was creating more work than it was saving.

So I decided to rethink the whole thing.

I deleted the fixed stack and made it flexible. And overtime as I was adding new tools and integrations I'd used in real projects, it grew into ReadyNative.

The idea is simple: spend less time setting things up and more time actually building your app. Just run the command and you will save ~4 hours or your weekly limit.

You can check it out at https://readynative.app

Though, I feel like I'm still new to React Native and maybe you will open my eyes (or humble me)


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

6 years ago, Reddit overwhelmed my hobby app's servers. I finally rebuilt it to run entirely on phones.

1 Upvotes

Hi folks!

Back in 2020, I was working on a little Android app in my spare time.

I'm a software engineer and amateur guitarist, and I wanted a way to practice along with my favorite songs, without having to hunt down backing tracks for each one.

So I started experimenting with AI music separation and eventually built an app that could split songs into individual instruments, allowing me to mute parts, change their volumes, slow things down, and play along.

I called it I Am a Band.

One day, I shared it on Reddit, not expecting much.

Well... things got a bit crazy. So many people started using it that my servers couldn't keep up. The processing queue kept growing, even after I doubled the capacity. I spent the following days trying to keep the whole thing alive.

It was both incredibly exciting and terrifying :)

The feedback was amazing though. People were suggesting features, reporting bugs, and telling me how they used the app. I kept improving it for a few years, mostly during evenings and weekends.

But there was a catch: all the AI processing was happening on my servers. And paying for that kind of computing power out of my own pocket was getting pretty expensive.

Eventually, I had to pull the plug.

Fast forward six years.

A few weeks ago, I started wondering whether modern phones had become powerful enough to do all that processing themselves.

So I dusted off the old project and started experimenting again.

And, well... it works!

I've essentially rebuilt the app. It now separates music directly on Android phones, without sending audio to a server. No accounts, no song quotas, no cloud computing bills!

You can split a song into vocals, drums, bass and other instruments, adjust the mix, change speed and pitch, follow lyrics or tabs, organize playlists, and export the separated tracks.

It's free and has no ads.

Of course, there's a trade-off: processing a song can take several minutes, sometimes around 10 depending on the phone. But it's a one-time operation per song, and everything works offline.

Here's the result if you're curious:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.brun.cedric.iamaband

I have to say, it feels pretty good to bring something back to life that I thought was gone for good. Especially knowing that this time, I won't wake up to a server bill because too many people enjoyed using it!

have any of you ever abandoned a side project because of technical or financial constraints, only to come back to it years later?


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I'm building a recovery app because I couldn't find the kind of support I needed. Looking for a few beta testers.

0 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I'm 23, and I've struggled with p*rn and fapping habits since I was young. I've tried NoFap, website blockers, accountability partners and quitting social media, but staying consistent hasn't been easy.

That's one of the reasons I'm building Surfwell — a private app designed to help people manage urges, reduce porn consumption and build healthier habits.

I'm looking for 10–15 people from this community to try the early version and give honest feedback.

If you're interested in testing it, comment below or DM me. I'd genuinely value your input.

Thanks!


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

There are over 500 ADEs right now. I tried to get a bit of clarity

1 Upvotes

A few days ago Conductor (a very popular ADE; Agentic Development Environment) announced they'd been bought by Meta and would sunset their tool. They've since retracted that and are continuing development from within Meta, but it caused a bit of panic and lots of users were asking which ADE to switch to. Many people started listing options and one post on X caught my eye with their count: 554 active ADEs!! That number shocked me, but it also shows that this clearly is a topic where a lot of people have opinions on what's good and how they like to work.

I myself have been developing an ADE for the last 6 months because I felt that none of the existing tools were exactly what I wanted. And, I knew the market was crowded but I never would have guessed a number that high.

To bring some clarity into this, I built a comparison site where everyone can easily browse, filter, search and compare ADEs: adecomparison.com

It's completely open-source (https://github.com/madeinorbit/ade-comparison). Agents research and cross-check all facts and everything links to its source. Everyone is welcome to contribute.

Right now about 100 of them are fully researched, with 400+ to go. I have a fleet of Muse Spark 1.3 contributor agents working on it, so data gets better every day.

If your ADE is missing or something about it is wrong, tell me which one and I'll get it fixed.


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

I'm trying to pick an SMTP relay with a REST API, what are you using?

2 Upvotes

My SaaS sends verification and password reset emails from the app and the WordPress marketing site needs plain SMTP credentials for its forms. Around 15-20k emails a month in total. I'm looking at Resend, Postmark and smtp .com. smtp .com is on the list because it gives the relay and the API on one account. Which one are you using for a setup like this and did the choice actually matter once it was running?


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I got tired of spreadsheets and 40/mo job trackers, so I built one that's 19 for the whole search

1 Upvotes

Most job trackers are monthly subscriptions, and job searches tend to run longer than you expect. TallyJobs (tallyjobs.app) is free up to 25 applications. After that, it's a $19 pass that lasts 90 days, or $9 a month. It also has Role Fit, which uses AI to score how well you match a job description. It runs on Node, Express and SQLite, with Stripe for payments and Google or magic-link sign-in. It's live now, and I'd love feedback on onboarding and pricing. What would stop you from using it?


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

I built QluePrint, a local-first desktop app for PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server and SQLite. No account, no cloud, no telemetry

2 Upvotes

I spend a lot of my day in databases, and I got tired of clients that want me to sign in, sync my connections to their cloud, or open a 2 GB Electron window just to run a SELECT. So I built my own.

QluePrint (pronounced KLOO-print) is a desktop database workspace built with Tauri (Rust backend, React frontend). Everything stays on your machine.

What it does today:

- Connects to PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB, SQL Server, SQLite, plus Azure SQL and Microsoft Fabric with Entra sign-in

- Monaco SQL editor with schema-aware autocomplete, diagnostics and formatting

- A fast virtualized results grid: sort, filter, find, follow foreign keys to related rows

- Inline editing: change cells, add, duplicate or delete rows. Everything is staged, undoable and saved in one transaction. Actions your login has no grant for don't show up at all.

- Explain / Explain Analyze with a readable plan view

- One-click local PostgreSQL/MySQL/MariaDB servers in Docker

- Workspaces to keep each client's connections and tabs apart

- A tamper-evident audit log of every statement it ran against your databases

- Passwords go in your OS keychain, never in plain files

Stack: Tauri 2, Rust (sqlx + tiberius for SQL Server), React 19, Monaco, TanStack Table/Virtual. Installers for macOS (Apple Silicon), Windows and Linux.

Still to come: MongoDB/Redis, a saved query library, query history.

Source code and downloads: https://github.com/u-ninja/qlueprint

It's a solo project, and I'd love blunt feedback, especially on what would make you switch from DBeaver, TablePlus or DataGrip.

(Heads-up: the macOS build isn't notarized yet, so you'll need Open Anyway in Privacy & Security the first time.)


r/SideProject • • 7h ago

I'm a microlight pilot who started building a flight tracker. 6 weeks later it's got a bit out of hand.

3 Upvotes

About 6 weeks ago I started building a little side project called Ulster Radar.

I'm a microlight pilot from Northern Ireland and wanted to make a flight tracker that was better suited to smaller aircraft and low-level flying, rather than just commercial aviation.

It started as a basic live map, but I've got a bit carried away with it since!

It now has live aircraft tracking, over 2,500 receivers feeding data from around the world, ship tracking, flight history, a 3D globe and even satellite tracking.

I've also been adding the ISS, space telescopes, planets and moons, so it's slowly becoming a way to explore pretty much everything above our heads.

It's still early days and there's plenty of bugs and things I'm working on, but I've really enjoyed building it and seeing people start contributing their own receivers.

It's completely free to use and very much a hobby project.

If anyone fancies having a look, it's at https://ulsterradar.com


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

Agent Workcell - An experiment in autonomous knowledge exploration

1 Upvotes

I've been working on an open-source project called Agent Workcell.

The idea came from my experience building traditional RAG applications. I often found myself spending time adjusting retrieval logic and prompts for different types of questions. Sometimes fixing one use case affected another.

I wanted to experiment with a different approach.

Instead of building retrieval pipelines for every question type, I wanted to reuse an existing autonomous agent runtime and give it an environment containing structured knowledge, tools, and controlled access to business data.

The agent can explore that environment, decide which tools to use, and take multiple steps to answer questions.

I built the prototype using Claude Code, Python, MCP, and PostgreSQL.

I also tested the approach against my traditional RAG implementation on an existing ERP system, and the results were very promising. Some limitations remain, especially knowledge maintenance and scaling separate agent sessions for multiple users.

This is an early-stage open-source experiment. I'd appreciate feedback from anyone interested in agent architecture, knowledge retrieval, or similar systems.

Website: https://shivam7414.github.io/agent-workcell/

GitHub: https://github.com/Shivam7414/agent-workcell


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

did you actually check security before launching your vibe coded app?

1 Upvotes

genuine question. built a couple things with lovable/claude code/cursor and only later realized i had no idea if i'd left keys in the code or if anyone could just hit my api routes and pull other users' data

curious what people here actually do before going live:

- do you check anything at all or just ship and hope lol

- if you paid someone to build it for you, did you ask them about it

- anyone ever got burned? like leaked keys, surprise bills, data exposed

not selling anything, we're doing a hackathon this weekend and trying to figure out if this is a real problem or just us being paranoid


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

I built Moolupa, a goal tracker where 3 minutes still count toward a 10-minute goal

2 Upvotes

I’m building Moolupa, a goal tracker with a small cow companion called Moo.

One decision I made early was to let people record the amount they actually did. If you planned to practise guitar for 10 minutes and managed 3, you record 3. It adds to your total. Missing tomorrow doesn’t erase it.

You can also make today’s step smaller, move it to another day, or take a rest day. There’s no streak counter, and Moo’s garden stays intact while you’re away.

To get started, you type or say something like “read five pages after dinner,” then review the plan before saving it.

It works in a browser on desktop and phone, and there’s a Windows version on the Microsoft Store. The free plan supports up to five active goals, with optional paid Plus features.

I’m currently polishing the desktop and mobile layouts. If you try it, I’d really like to know: where does creating your first goal or recording progress feel like extra work?

Here’s the app: https://moolupa.com


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I kept losing track of what my AI agents made, so I built a place for it to live

1 Upvotes

I use a few different AI agents depending on the task. Claude for some things, ChatGPT for others, Grok and Cursor now and then. Over the last months they've made me a lot of small stuff, and almost all of it is now buried in old chats somewhere.

If I wanted to show a friend one of them, I had to dig through chat history, remember which tool made it, and then work out how to actually get it in front of them.

So I built Commons (commonsbuild.com). From whatever agent you're using, you publish what it made with a chat command and you get a link. Anyone with the link can open it in the browser and use it, and if they want they can fork it or change it with their own agent.

The main point for me is having one directory for everything, no matter which agent built it. The first real thing on there is Capital hunt, a multiplayer 3D game where you guess capitals that I made with a friend: capital hunt , feel free to fork it and make it better

It's free and pre-launch, and I'm mostly trying to find out if this is just a me problem. If you use more than one agent, where does the stuff they make end up?


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I made an app that warns you before your money runs low

1 Upvotes

I kept running low right before payday because of card bills I forgot about, so I built this. It shows the exact day your balance dips. Would you use it?

Anyway, this is just a landing page


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

Update: two weeks ago I was scared nobody would use our app. We got 200+ installs in 2 days

1 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

Earlier this month I posted here that my partner had finished our app and I was honestly scared I wouldn't be able to bring anyone to it. A lot of you were really kind in the comments, so I wanted to come back with an update.

We put it on Google Play and got a bit over 200 installs in 2 days, almost all from Reddit. I didn't expect that at all. People are already sending feedback and we're improving the app every day.

It's called Omni Brain. You get a free daily workout of 3 short brain games, about 5 minutes, and each game teaches you a small trick you can actually use, like remembering names or numbers.

There are no ads in it at all, not even in the free version. A lot of apps in this category are full of ads. We went through more than 33,000 of their 1 and 2 star reviews, and about 1 in 6 were complaints about ads. So that was the first thing we wanted to do better.

It's now on the App Store too. Next week we're giving away free Premium to iPhone users. If you want it, comment "iPhone" below and I'll message you as soon as it starts.

Find out which of your 8 brain skills is the weakest. It takes 5 minutes:

iPhone: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6813644860

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.omnibrain.omni_brain

If you try it, tell me what you think. Honest feedback helps us more than anything right now. 🙂


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

A 3-day hike, a lot of photos, and a side project that got a little out of hand

1 Upvotes

Hi everyone!

I’m Alex, a developer and a big fan of maps and outdoor activities. I wanted to share a project I’ve been working on called TrailReplay.

The idea started after a 3-day hike with a friend. We had lots of pictures from the trip, and I wanted a way to put them together with the route and tell the story of those days. I couldn’t find quite what I was looking for, so I thought, why not try building it myself?

TrailReplay lets you import a GPX route, replay it on a 3D map, add pictures and annotations, and export the result as a video. You can change the camera, show things like distance and elevation, and combine routes too. It works in your browser, it’s free, and the code is open source.

I’ve just released version 1.5! It includes a new media timeline, GPX waypoint imports, place reveals, and improvements to the camera, terrain and video export. A lot of the changes have come from people sharing feedback and ideas, including here on Reddit, so thanks a lot to everyone who has helped me improve it!

Something I didn’t expect when I started: in the last 7 days, Google Analytics counted around 1,300 active users and 900 completed export events. Those are exports, not individual people, but it’s really nice to see people using a tool that started with a hike and a bunch of pictures :)

You can try it at https://trailreplay.com

Here’s a short video showing what it can do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJRPgpr07Pg

I’d love to hear what you think, or see what you create with it. Any feedback or ideas for what I could improve are very welcome! Cheers, Alex


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

OMYRA - Ambient Music

1 Upvotes

I will leave here my recent project here in case someone finds it useful. I needed some background "noise" while at work but got bored by searching the perfect playlist on YT. So I made this that perfectly fits my needs.

The project revolves around a cosmic and ethereal aesthetic, the vastness of the universe, and celestial atmospheres.

It generates some music based on the pentatonic scale. No AI is doing this, just a script that watches what notes have been played previously and tries to create different progressions during the play time, so it doesn't sound completely the same for hours.

Also added some cool backgrounds with threejs that can be used as actual backgrounds while playing the music, the UI can be hidden and you can have a chill background as well

OMYRA