Hourly Lightning

Inspiration

Asher Pembroke, family man and PLEBNET-PLAYGROUND contributor, noticed an ongoing issue amongst the freelance developer community and a roadblock to developing BTC Lightning. You must have capital in order to pay employees, which is often backlogged by debt with loans from banks. Hence, you may complete a project one day, and get paid weeks or even months later. What happens when you are supporting a family as a freelance developer, for example, and you need your hard earned money ASAP? One major issue of the archaic FIAT system in place involves employees having to wait to be rewarded after already completing the work they were paid to do. Ultimately, freelance developers lack an auditable system to attract clients and offer auditable practices that (1.) they are working by the hour outside an office setting and (2.) an existing system to be paid traditionally in the first place. We can no longer wait for our paychecks as inflation rises prices everyday. A dashboard visualizer featuring time tracking compatible with invoice channels offers an ability synergistic with the core concept of financial independence behind Bitcoin Lightning and Bitcoin itself.

What it does

The hourly dashboard connects hourly's git-based time tracking features with lightning invoice generation to allow instant payment on completion.​ One can select from among a set of work sessions, and based on the total amount of time alongside rate of pay, an invoice can be sent via BTC Lightning. Instead of manually engaging in clock-in and clock-out processes over and over again across projects, developers can easily perform this with the click of a button.​ Additionally, invoice channels are in a centralized at the same location where the work itself is tracked, which incentivizes/assists freelance developers who work outside an office setting. Tested with reg test coins via PLEBNET-PLAYGROUND.

How we built it

First, we had to painstakingly install Docker and various GitHub files supplied by our teammate, Asher, in order to simulate a dashboard for hourly. Before the hackathon, the hourly dashboard could only manually clock-in, clock-out, and display work logs. Beforehand, you could not select/interact with the worklogs, and invoice channels couldn't total the worklogs in relation to rate of pay. Once we installed Docker, Zach and Asher were able to work front-end and back-end (Python) in order to develop processes for selecting worklogs, summing the amount of time across these worklogs, and creating an invoice. Meanwhile, we all clocked-in with our own project in order to prove its utility. Ultimately, we built the Hourly Invoice Dashboard via PLEBNNET-PLAYGROUND (GitHub), Hourly (GitHub), GitBash, and Docker. PLEBNET-PLAYGROUND allowed us to test our dashboard and invoices with reg-test coins.

Challenges we ran into

Repeatedly, there was an issue of compatibility between Hourly, Docker, and Windows OS. Often, the source of these issues were vague, so we resolved this by allowing our Windows users, Margaret and Barrett, to access the hourly dashboard directly via their machine instead of using Docker like Asher and Zach. In other words, the most challenges we ran into involved setting everything up in the first place. Once we were on our feet, we were able to establish invoices, interact with worklogs, obtain a rate and total the amount of time within a few hours, which felt like a great success.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

First and foremost, we are proud of coming together as a team within a week's notice. Our team came from various parts of the country and came together to produce the Hourly Invoice Dashboard within 24 hours. We flew in from the North and West, and drove from the East to complete this hackathon. Also, we overcame tremendous learning curves in regards to adapting to the realm of BTC development and interacting with PLEBNET-PLAYGROUND. Most interestingly, it was a great pleasure to have our project literally assisting us in the creative process of elevating the project itself. We kept track of time with the original hourly dashboard and made it better simultaneously by introducing invoice channels and interaction with work logs.

What we learned

Thanks to the priceless assistance of our most experienced teammate, Asher Pembroke, we learned how to develop projects on Docker and run commands via GitBash. Also, our backend development learned a lot more in regards to the utility of Python. Most importantly, we learned how to interact with PLEBNET-PLAYGROUND in order to develop BTC related projects. Without this, we would have had to sacrifice our personal funds in order to demonstrate and test the Hourly Invoice Dashboard.

What's next for Hourly Invoice Dashboard

Honestly, in regards to functionality, the Hourly Invoice Dashboard is highly developed. On the other hand, the Hourly Invoice Dashboard needs considerable GUI aesthetic development. Now, we rely on a basic layout in order to offer a convenient and easy-to-use tool for the sake of time, however, given more time we would make the dashboard more aesthetically pleasing.

Built With

• python