Documentation

Track every red dot in the house

For: docs, the notebook, long posts, the resume

Quick start

Put Red Dot Tracker on the windowsill, nap as usual, and wake up to every red dot's path in a single dots.json.

$ install red-dot
$ red-dot watch ./living-room
$ red-dot track ./living-room → dots.json

How it works

The tracker looks at the walls thirty times a second. Each time it sees the dot, it notes where; whenever the dot bounces off a mirror or turns at a door frame, a new segment of its path begins.

red-dot track joins those segments into one file, grouped by room.

Commands

red-dot watch: start watching the walls
red-dot track: write every path to one file
red-dot stats: count dots, pounces and catches (usually zero)

Configuration

On first run, rooms are detected and written to ~/.red-dot/config.toml.

[rooms]
living-room = { windows = 2, mirrors = 1 }
hallway = { windows = 0, mirrors = 3 }

Each room takes a count of windows and mirrors. The more mirrors, the more turns the dot makes, and the longer its path.

If a room has too many dots, lower its sampling rate and the tracker will save its attention for the more interesting walls.

windows: how many windows, which decides where the dot comes in.
mirrors: how many mirrors, which decides how often the dot turns.
rate: samples per second, thirty by default.

FAQ

Will it help me catch the dot?

No. But it will tell you where the dot goes next.

Note

On narrow screens the table of contents becomes a scrollable bar under the nav.