So, I got this itch to build a smart dry cleaner. Not a real dry cleaning machine, mind you. That's way out of my league. I was thinking more about the tracking part. You know, what clothes did I drop off? When are they actually ready? My local place is... well, let's just say their system is a bit old-school. I figured, I could probably whip something up.

I had a few things I wanted this gadget to do, nothing too crazy:

• Track my clothes when they're "dropped off."
• Let me know when they're "ready for pickup."
• Maybe keep a simple list of what's in and what's out.

First thing, I grabbed a Raspberry Pi I had collecting dust. That was going to be the brains. Then I thought, how do I tell one shirt from another? QR codes! Cheap and easy. I got myself a basic USB webcam, plugged it into the Pi. Then came the fun part: trying to get Python to actually read those QR codes reliably. That took a lot of fiddling. Lighting, focus, the angle of the camera – it was a pain, honestly. But eventually, I got it mostly working.

Okay, so I could scan stuff. Now what? I needed a way to log it. Started super simple: just writing to a text file. Item ID, timestamp. Good enough for a start. Then, notifications. How would this thing tell me my imaginary dry cleaning was done? Email seemed like the easiest route. So, back to Python, wrestling with email libraries. Another couple of evenings gone, just like that.

I also wanted some kind of display. Nothing fancy. Just a little screen to show what was scanned or the status. Found a tiny LCD, wired it up. More Python. You see a pattern here, right? It's always more Python. And more wires. My desk looked like a rat's nest for weeks.

I built a little mock setup. A small clothes rack, some hangers with my homemade QR codes. The Pi and camera pointed at an "intake" spot. When I'd "drop off" a coded item, the camera would (hopefully) scan it, and the system would log it as 'checked in'. Then, to simulate the 'cleaning ready' part, I just had a simple command I'd type into the Pi. Like, 'item_123 ready'. That would trigger the email. Pretty basic, but it did the job for a prototype.

Now, this all sounds kinda smooth when I lay it out, but man, the roadblocks. The QR reader would work fine one minute, then completely fail the next because the sun moved and cast a shadow. Or the Pi would randomly decide not to connect to the WiFi. Standard project stuff, I guess. Frustrating, though. I even thought about using RFID tags for a hot minute – seemed more professional. But then I saw the prices and the extra gear needed. QR codes suddenly looked beautiful again.

So, what did I end up with? A pretty janky, homemade system that can scan QR-coded items, log them, let me manually update their status, and send an email when I say they're 'ready'. It’s definitely not something I could sell. It’s got wires hanging out, the software is probably full of little bugs I haven’t found yet, and it relies on me manually saying when stuff is done. But, hey, it technically works. Most of the time.

The biggest takeaway? Building even "simple" smart things is a whole lot of little steps, and each step can be a fight. Made me appreciate the polished apps and gadgets out there a bit more. Would I build another one? Probably. I’m a sucker for punishment, and I did learn a ton, mostly about how much patience you need when you're trying to make bits of cheap hardware and your own code talk to each other without screaming.