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How I Built a Chore Dashboard for My Family: Integrating Dakboard with Chorebuster

A long-time ChoreBuster user, Eric, has done some very clever things to create a home dashboard that displays chores allocated by ChoreBuster:

“To give you some background I have 4 children and smart wall/calendar that I setup and installed off of my kitchen. I wanted the ability to easily add a chore chart to the screen and experimented in different ways of doing it. I’m pretty techy so at one point I had a postgres database hosted on my unraid server and was adding records for each kid and then querying the database via API to get JSON responses which I then formatted onto my digital screen. It was great except it didn’t pass the wife approval test (WAF). This led me down the road of looking for something that did this and I spent a good 6 months researching reddit, magicmirror and the internet looking for an easy to manage solution. I needed something that allowed me or my wife to do the following:

  1. Need a web interface that allowed someone with no technical skills to easily add and edit chores and assign people
  2. Need a way to query the resulting schedule by person to display on my wall calendar
  3. Needed the response format to be parsable JSON
  4. Wanted to ensure that any solution had a helpful developer behind it
    When I found chorebuster I was a little leary if the software would actually work for my use case. I experimented with it for a bit but hit a few snags as there wasn’t direct API access and the ability to create a rotation of chores (not using points) was difficult to implement. I decided then to reach out to the developer to see what could be done and I was pleasantly surprised at the responsiveness. In the matter of a week or two I had working APIs and eventually a rotate feature that allowed me to easily create what I wanted.

I’ve been using chorebuster now for almost 5 years and I love it. Its a daily driver in my house to keep everyone on track with what daily chores they have to help with. I ended up going with Dakboard for my digital screen due to the headache of maintaining magicmirror (corrupt build’s on my server and the headache of making things look good). With dakboard all I had to do was write some simple script to pull the chore’s by person and display it. The code I use is attached for reference and a screenshot. You’ll see the chores in the right side of the screen which dynamically updates each morning.

Thank you for such a great app!”

We worked with Eric for a couple of weeks to build an API for him to use. That API is also used by the mobile phone app, too. If you’d like to make use of the API in your project, we’ll be happy to help.

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Streamlining Your Responsibilities with an Adult Chore Chart

Are you an adult seeking an effective way to manage your daily tasks and responsibilities, whether you lead a busy lifestyle or have a thriving professional life? Does ‘adulting’ feel like something other people do? ChoreBuster has you covered! While ChoreBuster is widely known for helping families distribute household chores fairly, it’s equally valuable for adults of all walks of life. In this guide, we’ll explore how ChoreBuster can be your go-to tool for managing your tasks, both at home and in your professional life, with the help of an adult chore chart.

Section 1: Getting Started

  • Create Your Account: Sign up for ChoreBuster and create your personal profile. Input your name and provide your email address – this will receive daily or weekly chore reminder emails so use an inbox you check often.

Section 2: Managing Personal Tasks

  • Specify Your Personal Chores: ChoreBuster allows you to list your personal tasks, whether they’re related to your home or work life. Include the frequency, time requirements, and any other relevant details. There is a preset list of chores you can import to speed this up.

Section 3: Viewing Your Schedule

  • Weekly Schedule: ChoreBuster generates a new schedule each week based on your tasks and preferences. You can view your weekly schedule, print it, mark chores as completed, and check what next week has in store.

Section 4: Staying Organized

  • Task Reminders: Enable task reminders to receive notifications when it’s time to complete a chore or task.
  • Marking Tasks as Completed: Keep your schedule up-to-date by marking tasks as completed.

Section 5: Integrating with Everything Else

  • Calendar: There is an iCal feed so chores can appear in you calendar app of choice.
  • Go Mobile: Use the ChoreBuster Viewer app to quickly see what needs to be done today and cross them off as you finish them.

ChoreBuster is more than just a chore scheduling tool for families and children; it’s a versatile task management platform that adapts to your unique needs with the help of a chore chart. Whether you’re an adult looking to streamline your busy life or a professional seeking to enhance your organizational skills, ChoreBuster offers the tools and features to help you stay on top of your tasks.

With a bit of organization you’ll have more time to focus on what truly matters to you, whether it’s personal growth, career advancement, or simply enjoying your free time. Sign up today and discover the power of a well-organized life with ChoreBuster.

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News

iPhone app available

We’re excited to announce that the ChoreBuster iPhone app is now available on the App Store!

If you’re ready to take control of your household chores and keep everyone on track, download the ChoreBuster.net iPhone app today!

After installing the app you will need to connect it to your ChoreBuster.net account by typing in a code which you get from this page of the website.

Please bear in mind that this is the first release of this app so there may be some minor glitches. Let us know if you find any issues. Thanks!

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Lifestyle

Free / Cheap Apps for Managing ADHD Around the Home

ADHD affects millions of people worldwide. ADHD symptoms can manifest in various ways but the ones affecting home life and routines the most include disorganization, being easily distracted, not completing tasks, forgetfulness, and time-blindness. 

You can go a long way with a simple calendar and todo app, like Google Calendar, Google Tasks and Google Keep (or their Microsoft equivalents). But there are several apps available that can take it to another level and really help individuals with ADHD manage their symptoms and stay on top of their daily tasks. Some, like ChoreBuster, help entire families to work together better rather than focusing on individuals alone.

Roubit allows you to define a routine for each weekday and then mark off items as you complete them. Good for building daily habits.

Notion is an all-in-one app for note-taking and data organization. Essentially, it combines a wiki with a database. It offers a wide range of functionalities that are difficult to describe concisely. You could use Notion for taking notes, managing to-do lists, planning purchases, working on writing ideas, and much more.

Todoist is good for tracking chores, if you have a lengthy list of recurring chores that need to be done on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis. Notion is not equipped to handle recurring tasks effectively, and Roubit cannot accommodate tasks that occur less frequently than once a week. Todoist offers a clean and user-friendly interface for viewing upcoming tasks, and it sends notifications to a phone to help you remember to complete them.

ChoreBuster is similar to Todoist in that it sets up recurring chores although it also automatically shares them among members of your household in a fair way. Rather than focussing on the individual it treats the household as a group of people who can work together.

Cozi is a family organizer app that can help individuals with ADHD manage their family’s schedule and routines. The app allows users to create and share calendars, to-do lists, and shopping lists with their family members. It also has a feature called “Family Journal,” which allows you to record and share memories with your family.

Routinery (Android, Apple) creates a daily routine with large blocks of time set aside for each activity and alerts you when it is time to move on to the next activity. Great for time-blindness.

Blip blip is also good for time-blindness. It simply makes your phone beep on the hour (like an old school Casio watch, or other chimes) which is enough to gently remind us of the passing of time and snap us out of unproductive activities.

Trello is a free project management app that can be used to organize tasks and projects. It is an excellent tool for individuals with ADHD who struggle with disorganization and incompletion. Trello allows users to create boards, lists, and cards to organize tasks and track progress. 

Forest is a productivity app that uses a gamified approach to help users stay focused and avoid distractions. The app works by encouraging users to plant virtual trees that grow while they stay focused on their task. If the user leaves the app, the tree dies, which helps to provide motivation to stay focused and avoid distractions.

Managing ADHD symptoms can be challenging, especially around the home. However, with the help of these apps, people with ADHD can stay organized, avoid distractions, manage their time better, and stay on top of their daily tasks and routines. These apps are not a substitute for professional treatment, but they can be a valuable tool for people with ADHD to manage their symptoms and improve their quality of life.

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News

Android app is ready

We’re excited to announce that the ChoreBuster.net Android app is now available on the Google Play Store! With the app you can easily view and tick off your chores right from your phone.

If you’re ready to take control of your household chores and keep everyone on track, download the ChoreBuster.net Android app today!

After installing the app you will need to connect it to your ChoreBuster.net account by typing in a code which you get from this page of the website.

Please bear in mind that this is the first release of this app so there may be some minor glitches. Let us know if you find any issues. Thanks!

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News

Progress on building a mobile app

It feels great to be making good progress with a mobile app for ChoreBuster. After many delays and distractions, it’s finally happening.

The basic functionality is there. All it does it displays today’s chores and you can tick them off and switch to seeing someone else’s chores.

It’s nearly ready. I’d like to make it show unfinished chores from the past also, perhaps below today’s chores.

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News

Chore revisions – let the past remain the past

Some of you who have been using ChoreBuster for a while will have noticed an odd quirk – when you edit a chore it recalculates the entire schedule from when you made your account, often months ago, to the present, then off into the future. As chores are allocated based on what work gets done, the new schedule could look totally different to the one you had moments before. 

This isn’t really a problem when you first set up your schedule but as people start to do chores it is – people who had recently finished chores would no longer be allocated those chores and so ChoreBuster would ‘forget’ they had been completed and calculating rewards based on chore completion becomes impossible.

Another side-effect of shuffling a schedule like this is that an email containing chores to do that day may no longer match what is on the website so if some people use the email and others use the website, confusion ensues.

A solution!

This week those problems have been mostly solved – whenever you change a chore the new settings will only take effect from tomorrow onward. The past will be unaffected. If you delete a chore then it will remain on older days of the schedule and stop appearing from tomorrow onward. 

This is achieved by creating revisions of a chore when it is saved, similar to how CMS software does when you edit a page. Each revision has a period of time when it is used to calculate the schedule, which is the time between revisions. The current settings, the ones you see when editing the chore are used from whenever you last saved the chore and into the future.

Caveats

When saving a chore all future days will be recalculated, as before, so if the weekly email has been sent and you make some changes the day after then the issue of emails and online not matching will still occur. This problem should not occur with the daily email as new settings take effect the day after they were saved.

This was a major rewrite of some core parts of the ChoreBuster algorithm and there were some tricky parts that are hard to be 100% sure about. If you notice any strange behavior, please let us know. If it’s working properly but it is more annoying than helpful, please let us know!

If you change the start date of a chore the revisions don’t work and past parts of the schedule may end up looking different. Sorry, fixing that was too hard for now.

That is the main update we’ve been working on. But there are a few more things we’ve managed to squeeze in recently too, so read on for more.

Chore End Date

In order to make chore deletion work the way described above, every chore needs an end date. So when you delete a chore, behind the scenes they are not really deleted, just given an end date. It was trivial to provide a field in the user interface so you can set this to a value without deleting the chore.

This field is not likely to be used often so it is hidden away in the “Optional Extras” section when editing a chore.

Cloning Chores

Often you’ll want to create a few quite similar chores with minor variations. Now, you can create a duplicate of another chore with a single click from the Show Chores screen. Look for something like this:

Be aware that if you clone a chore with a start date in the past that this will cause the schedule to be recalculated from that date onward, potentially making a mess of your finished chores and rewards tracking. To avoid this you can edit the start date on the cloned chores.