Roger Frost: science, sensors and automation

apps for random reasons

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I’ve been using up free AI credits making phone and web apps for reasons good and silly…and given an idea for an app you don’t need more than to sign up for an account with one of the coding services such as lovable.dev. Let’s say you wanted an app to manage a list of the gadgets you own – visit the site, explain the need and provide the list. Things might or might not turn-out how you intended but here begins the learning. With experience you’ll know what you need to specify upfront and what to leave to the AI to create. For example, I found best to say that you want a mobile app upfront… some of the apps below are PWA (progressive web apps) and they’ll install on a phone without the app store. Services also exist to host your app as an app store might.

The process teaches how apps come about – and for this the hobby can be recommended. Making apps has helped me find a footing with jargon which has puzzled me since birth (VSCode; github; React / Vite; frontend; python; MySql; Supabase; docker and PHP endpoints). If you have some infrastructure, such as a web hosting account on IONOS you can go make apps based on html and php that run in the web browser. I started by chatting with Google Gemini or Claude Chat and asking for the code (eg php files) which I upload using Microsoft VScode. Later I used VScode with Claude code ‘in the terminal’ to write and upload the code to my web space. I’d then ask Claude to fix problems. I used an openrouter.ai paid-for ‘key’ as well as vscode connections to my webspace via FTP and spent very little money. Vscode now has connections to my Promox service running Docker to run say, python scripts or n8n workflows. (You can do a lot of clever things with ‘n8n’ once it’s set up on a Docker server). My next steps will involve getting AI to manage all this for me. That’s called agent-mode – I’ll have more to say about it through 2026.

Here are my first efforts from my first six months – each is a web app requiring no permissions or ads or other concerns.

A quiz about welsh culture - based on the code used for the other quiz called 'Life in the UK'.
A quiz about welsh culture – based on the code used for the other quiz called ‘Life in the UK’.
finds walks listed on the internet. Easily add them to your diary and see where to go on the map
A most silly word search game where you need to look for building names in the grid. It looks hard but is easier than finding the place you're supposed to be working.
A most silly word search game where you need to look for building names in the grid. It looks hard but is easier than finding the place you’re supposed to be working in.
Calculate how much your next EV charge will cost using home and public chargers. Compares times and the cost of filling up with petrol. Has a settings page to add your own details.
Calculate how much your next EV charge will cost using home and public chargers. Compares times and the cost of filling up with petrol. Has a settings page to add your own details.
A slide show of tips I wrote on my blog. Some are very useful. Each tip appears once unless reset.
A slide show of tips I wrote on my blog. Some are very useful. Each tip appears once unless reset.
When you've several things to do in a day this puts each task in a list and calculates when it should begin and when you'll be finished.
When you’ve several things to do in a day this puts each task in a list and calculates when it should begin and when you’ll be finished.
When you've several things to do in a day this puts each task in a list and calculates when it should begin and when you need to start. Has a simple way to add 'buffer time' (eg bus waiting time) after each task.
When you’ve several things to do in a day this puts each task in a list and calculates when it should begin and when you need to start. Has a simple way to add ‘buffer time’ (eg bus waiting time) after each task.
A most silly game for exam invigilators based on where's wally.
A most silly game for exam invigilators based on where’s wally.
With 40 university venues scattered around the city I devised a bingo game to record which ones I'd visited at some time.
With 40 university venues scattered around the city I devised a bingo game to record which ones I’d visited at some time.
An app to manage a list of local pubs and cafes. The list is a published Google Sheet and we do some PHP to collect the data from this one ‘single-source-of-truth’. There’s a very similar Lovable pubs and cafes app version here

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