A desktop application that monitors Reddit for posts about industrial computing, automation, and related topics. Useful for sales teams, product managers, and engineers who want to stay on top of industry conversations and customer pain points in real time.
- Polls 8 subreddits every 60 seconds (configurable): PLC, SCADA, controlsengineering, embedded, sysadmin, techsupport, industrialautomation, manufacturing
- Searches new posts for 21 keywords including: industrial pc, HMI, panel pc, fanless, Allen Bradley, Siemens, Rockwell, Advantech, etc.
- Displays matches in a live activity log with timestamps
- "Matched Posts" window shows all matches in a sortable table
- Double-click or "Open in Browser" to jump directly to the Reddit post
- Settings window to edit subreddits, keywords, and poll interval
Uses Reddit's public JSON API (reddit.com/r/{sub}/new.json) with a
generic User-Agent header. No credentials, no OAuth, no Reddit account,
no browser session needed. Read-only, anonymous access.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Language | Python 3 |
| UI framework | tkinter (included with Python) |
| External dependencies | None — standard library only |
| Compiler | None — interpreted. No build step required |
| Tested on | Python 3.11, Windows 11 |
Tested on Windows 11 only. Should run unmodified on:
- Windows 10 — same Python/tkinter runtime, no OS-specific calls
- macOS 12+ — tkinter ships with Python from python.org (not the Xcode command-line tools build, which omits tkinter). Aqua-native rendering via Tk 8.6.
- Ubuntu / Debian 22.04+ — requires
sudo apt install python3-tk(tkinter is a separate package on Debian-based distros) - Fedora / RHEL 9+ — requires
sudo dnf install python3-tkinter
May require minor adjustments on:
- Wayland-only Linux desktops — tkinter relies on X11. Most Wayland compositors (GNOME, KDE) run XWayland by default so it should work, but pure Wayland without XWayland will not.
- Older Python (3.7–3.9) — should work but untested.
python reddit_monitor.pyOr on Windows:
py reddit_monitor.py| File | Description |
|---|---|
reddit_monitor.py |
Application source (single file, ~380 lines) |
settings.json |
Persisted settings (subreddits, keywords, poll interval). Auto-created on first settings save. |
Click Settings in the menu bar to edit:
- Subreddits — one per line, no
r/prefix needed - Keywords — one per line, case-insensitive matching against post title and body text
- Poll interval — seconds between full scan cycles (30–300 s)
Settings are saved to settings.json in the same directory as the script.