GeneralHealthBots - simple reminder tool for drinking and posture reminders

[Gewerd_Strauss]

This is the first thing I wrote that is ever actually published on here, and it is probably way over engineered for what it is supposed to do.

Documentation and code on Github.

This was originally only intended as a personal-use program because I lack the willpower to care for my own health while working at the PC, and this is the result. This script can be used to remind yourself regularly to drink water, and to switch in-between standing and sitting positions, as I found myself spending large parts of my day sitting in front of a pc without standing up or drinking. Both are really not that great circumstances to be in.
There is one feature to be added, but it is low priority and it will take time until I can implement it - for now, it is considered 99.5% feature-complete.




The script is interacted with from the tray-icon itself, and GUIs from there on. I tried my best to get rid of any bugs, but as always you can never be sure at the start.
Both "bots" can use different sounds, images and notification times. All settings aside from the notification texts can be edited via GUIs, and all settings are stored in an ini-file. As a general rule of thumb, as long as you don't (re-)move files or auxiliary files (.ini, any audio- or png-file chosen to be used) in relation to the main file, you are good to go.






The project will most likely not be updated anymore, as it has virtually everything I could think of that I deem relevant. It was also not written to be quickly expanded, so 80% of the code is hardcoded to do one thing on a static set of inputs to create a static set of outputs.

Do not fully trust the updater, should I ever decide to drop an update - I wrote it myself and only have so many methods for testing it. In theory it should work, but that hasn't stopped conceived-to-be-foolproof things from not working out beforehand. Make a backup of your ini-file ("A_ScriptDir/GeneralHealthBots/GeneralHealthBot.ini") and any other files you want to retain that are within "A_ScriptDir/GeneralHealthBots". Then run the updater and wish yourself luck. If it breaks, please open a ticket on github and download manually. Be aware that the "GeneralHealthBots.ini"-file (which contains the settings) is overwritten if an update is installed automatically.

Credits for others' used and adapted code on github.
I am not going to rewrite the entire documentations here again, took enough time in markdown.


P.S.: I suck at writing forum posts, this has been all over the place - way harder than writing the code for this.

[william_ahk]

Great work! I wrote a similar script that overlays the screen with random quotes on a set interval to remind me to stand around and I was considering to release it as well.

[Gewerd_Strauss]

Great work! I wrote a similar script that overlays the screen with random quotes on a set interval to remind me to stand around and I was considering to release it as well.

Admittedly, any sane ahk proficient user would write a ten-line script to be edited manually on the fly instead of using this - as far as raw functionality is concerned, this is laughably overengineered for what it does at its core, but I tend to lean on the side of overengineering stuff, and then burning out regarding ideas for the next two months or so (Or just the critical mass of sensible-to-me scripts has been done already now.)