If you’re working from home and you have children, you’re probably finding it all pretty demanding at the moment. Spreadsheets and multiple tabs and concentrating aren’t nearly so manageable without the dedicated workspace you have at the office and with, instead, small people vying relentlessly for your attention.
And that’s not to mention the horror that is arranging video conference calls and home life around one another. There’s always the danger that a housemate (young offspring or otherwise) might embarrassingly crash your formal party like what happened to Professor Robert Kelly live on BBC News. (See above. Still funny!)
Well, Belgian maker Elio Struyf has created a homemade solution to mitigate against such unsolicited workspace interferences: he built a status light that integrates with Microsoft Teams so that his kids know when he’s on a call and they should stay away from his home office.
DIY busy light created with Raspberry Pi and Pimoroni Unicorn pHAT
The light listens to to Elio’s Microsoft Teams status and accordingly displays the colour red if he’s busy chatting online, yellow if his status is set to ‘Away’, or green if he’s free for his kids to wander in and say “Hi”.
Here’s what you need to build your own:
The Pimoroni Unicorn pHAT has an 8×4 grid of RGB LEDs that Elio set to show a single colour (though you can tell them to display different colours). His Raspberry Pi runs DietPi, which is a lightweight Debian distro. On top of this, running Homebridge makes it compatible with Apple’s HomeKit libraries, which is how Elio was able to connect the build with Microsoft Teams on his MacBook.
Elio’s original blog comprehensively walks you through the setup process, so you too can try to manage your home working plus domestic duties. All you need is to get your five-year-old to buy into your new traffic-light system, and with that we wish you all the luck in the world.
And give Elio a follow on Twitter. Fella has mad taste in T-shirts.
Website: LINK
