Show HN: I turned my iPhone and a $20 smart plug into an f-stop timer

I am a film photographer and do some darkroom printing and always wanted one of the proper, advanced f-stop timers, but never really wanted to spend a couple hundred dollars on one. Eventually I figured my phone was already perfectly capable of doing the timing, it just needed a way to switch the enlarger.

So I built Darkplug around a cheap smart plug. The app controls the enlarger over the local network and does regular timing, f-stop timing, test strips, has an intuitive dodge/burn workflow, split grade (2 timing channels) and paper development timing.

I’ve been using it for a few months in my improvised bathroom darkroom.

Fair warning: the app was blindly vibe coded using Codex and Xcode.




Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49978595


Points: 30


# Comments: 2

guid

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49978595

source_url

https://peterszentkiralyi.eu/darkplug/

author_name

pentakkusu

id: 7400
uid: RZ9JB
insdate: 2026-10-06 19:05:19
title: Show HN: I turned my iPhone and a $20 smart plug into an f-stop timer
additional:

I am a film photographer and do some darkroom printing and always wanted one of the proper, advanced f-stop timers, but never really wanted to spend a couple hundred dollars on one. Eventually I figured my phone was already perfectly capable of doing the timing, it just needed a way to switch the enlarger.

So I built Darkplug around a cheap smart plug. The app controls the enlarger over the local network and does regular timing, f-stop timing, test strips, has an intuitive dodge/burn workflow, split grade (2 timing channels) and paper development timing.

I’ve been using it for a few months in my improvised bathroom darkroom.

Fair warning: the app was blindly vibe coded using Codex and Xcode.




Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49978595


Points: 30


# Comments: 2


category: Hacker News
md5:
guid: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49978595
source_url: https://peterszentkiralyi.eu/darkplug/
updated:
image:
author_name: pentakkusu
author_link:
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