Perhaps there is some (elitist) disinterest floating in the air, maybe due to empathy being wanting. I also think this is an uninteresting and quite badly-done thing, but whoever did it had fun in the process and learned a couple of things in the process, and I think this deserves a lot of appreciation.

What you're probably trying to communicate (maybe in an overly-honest way) is that there is a great disparity between the function being performed and the power of the hardware there. The main obstacle the author encountered was his lack of knowledge related to electronics and embedded systems, not the scarcity of resources or the difficulty of the problem (or both) that are typically considered hacky. This is very much equivalent to writing the well-known Currency Converter application in Scala. On a quad-core system. You don't see much of that on HN.

I know people in my field (embedded systems) who, like me, are somewhat embittered by the "Arduino" and the "RPi" culture. The rate at which I have to explain why something is inadequate for mass manufacturing, unsafe, sub-optimal or outright disastrous to people who think transistors have holes in them but are really convinced <something> is simple because they did it in node.js, on their PIs, with a couple of wires and arduino shields hooked up, has probably tripled since the Pi became popular. But not everyone who is happy about how a small hack they did works is also an arrogant asshole, and we should probably remember that before bashing them.

So you're basically saying that you're only a "hacker" if you do stuff with hardware. That is completely upside down, if not borderline elitist.

Building stuff and "hacking" has no requirement for hardware. It hasn't been that way for a long while. Now excuse me while I gladly take our Raspberry Pis, Arduinos and "software" thingimaggigs off your precious lawn.

You might have a point from a technical perspective, but I think these kinds of technically easy projects show their worth in other ways.

In this case, the builders had to think about their users, the best way to notify people, the kind of notifications which would work best (active/passive) and in doing so, they've just strengthened those neural pathways that are involved in this sort of customer-focused thinking.

The fact that it's technically easy just means that it was a lightweight thing to do which didn't take up much time at all and generally improved morale. I think that's a good thing.

Well, then we obviously differ in our definitions of "not wasting" our lives. I find time spent creating something/anything as worthwhile, whereas you find time spent being challenged as worthwhile. In the end we're both creating something; spawning usefulness from our own doing. It's still a learning experience, even if you're not overly technically challenged or frustrated.

Just because something isn't difficult, doesn't mean it isn't useful. And sometimes people just enjoying doing stuff. Do you enjoy watching a movie, or reading fiction, or just sitting and chatting with friends?

I guess yours is the only correct definition of a "useful thing".