Busy Status Bar
busy.bar
busy.bar
The first time I saw this was some friends of friends who were trying to make it into a startup. They quickly discovered that their users liked the idea of a busy light for the office, but didn’t like to update it on or off throughout the day. So after the first few days people just defaulted to leaving it marked as “busy”. Within a week or two their coworkers realized that the light was always on busy, so they started asking if they were really busy.
At that point, the entire busy light idea had been defeated.
This product looks more versatile. Being able to automatically tie it to meeting status or set pomodoro timers could make it more interesting.
However, I predict the same fate: Eventually people will realize the light is busy when the person isn’t really busy, and then return to the old habit of interrupting to ask if they’re busy.
Unless the user actually adds green available time at regular intervals throughout the day, people learn that they have to ignore the red busy light and ask.
There's no clear, easy protocol that works for everyone, unfortunately. Some people are always going to operate on the 'better to ask forgiveness than permission' model. And I say this as someone who is often in the 'always busy' camp.
Most employees probably have enough credibility to explain away one or two missed deadlines, but not 5 or 6 in a row without providing actual proof.
Like the geniuses that block off their whole day everyday on their calendar or set their Teams status to unavailable all day.
as someone who leaves themselves open to hear out others with their "hey do you have a second to check this out" ideas
y'all are missing out
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A professional needs a strategy to stay productive despite the noise, while not missing the occasional needles in the message haystack.
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Doing it 1-2 days/week is the difference between being able to get some focus time to deliver something of value, and just being an internal search engine.
My job has lots and lots of calls. I am happy to leave most of my calendar open. But most mornings, and at least one full day every 2 weeks is mine, and no, you can't have it, you're not entitled to it, it's important to me I have that time to actually do focus work.
The trick is balance for the role. For engineers it should be a lot more focus time, for PMs and managers it should be a lot more managers, but you should still be able to block out calendars for focus time if you need to - just not all day, every day, forever.
It looks like to me that due to previous solutions, people try to improve upon in the same domain. May be the premise of the solution is wrong.
However, one does not always plan in advance to get into deep focus, so I don't really believe this problem is solveable in a useful way. Basically, we need to learn to regain focus quickly and push people away when busy.
Also, async interrupt methods are great when used properly: don't you hate it when someone pings you with "hi" or "hi, I have a question" or similar and waits for your response? Good practice is to ask a full question which allows the other side to respond when they can without interrupting.
I see a lot of growth potential in this space.
I use a Life Calendar in Obsidian[1] which shows the weeks elapsed and remaining to my set life expectancy(concept made famous by Tim Urban), it helps me focus with ADHD.
Something like Busy Status bar on the table can help display the life calendar 24x7.
[1] https://fosstodon.org/@abishek_muthian/113281548403039832
The only things I’ve found were impractical objects, or apps that cost $10-50 per month because they’re designed for consultants who bill their time. Apps are not accurate while one is in meetings, since the computer is off.
The thing is, even for consultants, they get no value from a red “Busy” gadget, but having an object on the table which you can punch to set on which client you’re working, would certainly be useful. More fun than an app, because sometimes you need physical objects.
I’d just like to clock in and clock out.
Been doing this for years. It's great to help me focus on working when I'm actually working, and doing other stuff when I'm not actually working.
Looks like the app is available on iOS too if you're an iPhone user.
When I did that kind of work though, I had a time tracker application that kept track of which window was in the foreground, based on what project I had active in Eclipse (at the time) I could give a rough guesstimate about what project I spent how much time on.
Seems this one automatically enables "Busy" if the microphone is activated on the device, though I can't see any reason a similar product couldn't check your calendar
It’s not mentioned on https://www.flipperdevices.com/, neither on https://flipperzero.one/ or their Instagram?
They have been plagued with peopling scamming people in their name before
I am not saying it is a scam it's just very strange that all connections between busy.bar and flipper devices are one way. One would expect some two way mentions
(And in case anyone reads my comment without seeing that the founder of Flipper already commented confirming this is theirs, not a scam: that's the case.)
To be extra cautious, select it to make sure it's real text and not a screenshot of a real copyright notice - this is a common workaround. There is also one known proof of concept exploit using false glyphs in web fonts - this is why many security researchers disable the loading of fonts.
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I just got 8 of those with no authorization
"We are looking for a professional multidisciplinary designer to join our Busy Status Bar team and help bring the product to Kickstarter, generating excitement among future users."
Pavel Zhovner (a lead of flipper devices) wrote about Busy status bar 3 months ago in his Telegram channel (https://t.me/zhovner_hub/2073).
At https://flipperzero.one/ you can find habr.com blog link. The first post in Flipper blog was made by Zhovner https://habr.com/ru/users/zhovner/ (who has a link to telegram channel zhovner_hub).
This explanation is much more forthright.
“The main idea is to tell people to ‘F—— off for 15 minutes’ before they get to interrupt you.”
Right now, we are working on implementing Matter smart home protocol and will slightly change the product concept.
What are the odds of a kit version woth a lower pricetag and some assembly required?
Or even better, a version that ships with everything besides "the brain" and allows us to use our Flipper Zero as the brain :) Looking at the old blog articles about the project, it seems it got started with using Flipper Zero as the brain, so maybe it's not that far-fetched.
In this case I believe the post is legit.
(I think lots of HN people have issues with reality so just in case the answer is: absolutely not.)
So yes except for the last point, and also the other points...
They only caught themselves while halfway filling in the code, and I'm sure that was captured too.
Don't underestimate organized crime.
(or the account was compromised, of course)
or something.
+1 CO2/PM2.5
I think it should also have NVMe and SFF-8644 for external disk shelves. At least 6x 10GbE, with 4 on SFPs and 2 on copper. A GPU with excellent hardware transcoding, and slotted VRAM for that local LLM fun. Plus an 8k projector for movie nights at the office.
And a pony; every single one of these fucking kitchen timers must also come with a pony.
It will listen in all directions at once, 24/7/365, and send the recordings home to mother.
If done right, that should keep the end-user price below $10.
However, the original inventor of the Pomodoro technique explicitly advocates a "low tech" approach - a mechanical kitchen timer, because he argued that the tactile and auditory elements (i.e., the turning moves and ticking sounds) get associated with the elements of the techniques in the human brain.
It would be interesting to evaluate both variants of the approach in a scientific experiment.
https://www.amazon.com/-/en/38-1005/dp/B00335P518 - about €7 or $13, depending on your geography
I think hardware that can "passively" be more useful with sensors and similar are easy wins. No reason it has to disrupt a timer, it just hides sensors you'd want within a device that would already be sitting out in your home/office.
Temp/humidity is simple enough, but reasonably priced CO2 sensors with any accuracy are an issue
Or that it’s too complicated. Then another startup comes along to “simplify” the product and the cycle begins anew.
[1] https://sensirion.com/products/catalog/SCD30
[2] https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/vindstyrka-air-quality-sensor-s...
Then take a look at the HN profile, which leads you to the Keybase profile.
Doesn't have any of the social "features".
I understand Keybase allows you to link up a bunch of accounts, but it doesn't prevent you from making all of those accounts say you are the CEO/CTO of some company unfortunately.
At least a GitHub profile link can usually be used to validate that this account actually has write access to a GitHub organization, so you can somewhat see it's the right person. Requires them to have pushed any public commits to within that organization though.
Looks great, love the dial/switch big button combo, and the opportunity to buy something attractive that's a "hackable screen with buttons" is very high for me.
Another likely use is to be a controller for audiobooks or music in our rumpus if I ever get a hold of one. Again, drivable by kids and oldies who visit is a huge plus.
People want to come in sometimes to access a closet, but they don't know if your in a meeting, so it would also need to detect if your in a meeting, and the microphone being on or off is not enough because people often mute themselves. Calendar access is also not enough because sometimes you start a meeting without a calendar thingy, and also knowing if your 'on air' with an open door can tell them if they have to be worried if they could be on camera if they walk by the door.
It could be a very simple LED, it just needs a good agent on your desktop. Also a 'yellow light' for an upcoming meeting in a couple minutes (so this is where calendar access is useful) or an orange light for camera & microphone off.
They're referenced on the second picture on the site, with the backside of the device that shows you how to control it.
https://flipperdevices.com/jobs#!/tab/282752814-2
…linked at the bottom of https://flipperzero.one/
Doesn't quite have the same aesthetic but inside it's just an ESP32 (flashed via the USB-C port) and there's various mature open source firmware replacements. I use awtrix[1] on mine and it's very easy to tie in HomeAssistant for doorbell notifications and that sort of thing. I did also knock up a Pomodoro app for it.
0: https://www.ulanzi.com/products/ulanzi-pixel-smart-clock-288...
I've had a project idea for a while that would require a bit more juice. In short, I want to make a music practice timer for ADHD kids that avoid actually playing music during practice time. I want it to be beefy enough to run some simple ML for detecting instruments being played, and I only want the timer to count down while the instruments are playing. I picture it looking a lot like the clock above, but with something like a Raspberry Pi jammed inside so it's got enough power to reliably detect "violin."
Any ideas on hardware for that?
https://www.reddit.com/r/arduino/comments/16asjx9/esp32s3_do...
If you need grunt and you don't specifically want the aesthetic of an led matrix panel you'd probably be better off with an old phone or tablet based thing.
The TC001 afaik doesn't have any mics inside anyway.
From my own experience learning to play the organ, I have improved least when I play relatively fluidly, practising with music well within my abilities. On the contrary, the most improvement has come when I've slowed down, allowed myself to count the timing, repeat sections, read the sheet music more carefully or even just take a break entirely. So although silence won't improve one's playing by itself, I think it's a natural by-product of an effective studying technique that, if at all possible, shouldn't be discouraged with such a timer.
But, yeah, it may or may not be helpful.
you don't only add the sum of the electronic parts, but materials, r&d, payment for the one who does the assembly, marketing, taxes & accounting, shipping package, refunds and defects, payment for someone to produce it or the usage of your existing equipment, etc. if you add all of these, you will see that it's not cheap.
I'd love to attach this to a PoE to USB-C ethernet adapter to talk to it over API via hardwired. Still looking for something like that. The flipper busy bar seems to at least have some connectivity over USB.
I have to warn that it sounds like hot garbage though. The neat thing with ESP32 devices is that you can make it sound okay using its built in 8-bit DACs, or great using I²S.
Speaking of hardware hacking; you can also get POE/LAN adaptors for the ESP32, if you have free hardware pins left for it.
Programming it with your own code is still a mess, see "Panel Communication": https://github.com/auc0le/JT-Edit
But quite some people are happy to pay the extra $174 for not needing to hack together software, a housing, physical controls, etc.
While I'm not an expert, my own experimentation suggests this is correct
It's pretty good hardware wise, it would be hard to knock up DIY for $50 even just in BOM.
Edit: teardown in German https://youtu.be/-Dn3A5V8ZPo @ 04:30
I wonder why it’s not better addressed. It needs to 1. be out of the office, on the door, 2. therefore bluetooth, 3. always on, and 4. it’s simple on/off light!
Love the marketing on it: « the body is moderately thick and thin »
They can always book time with you, send an email/IM, etc if there's something they can't resolve on their own.
You have your own deliverables and being interrupted every 10 minutes with inane questions that a web search or a look at the internal wiki/KB would have resolved is not a productive use of anyone's time.
Also, forcing them to wait produces better quality, better researched questions as hopefully they should make some attempt to resolve things on their own.
Also, no one I collaborated with or on my team was ever the issue (except that one time at my first job when someone lied their way into a role, and constantly asked me to do their job). If my team member ever wanted to chat or distract me I had no issue.
It’s the fucking CEO who hasn’t bothered to talk to you for a month and ignore every email walking up to your desk, literally knocking on your table to get you to take your headphones off and give them your attention and saying “hey, when is this new feature gonna be done” when the project management software shows very clearly that everything is on track to ship at X date.
Really this isn’t about collaboration, it’s about people being entitled.
But no, a context switch required for uttering a few words can absolutely topple the tower of concentration somebody has spent last half an hour building. Certain occupations, engineering among them, require ingesting a large amount of context and making sense of it before productive work can start. My lack of patience with a question which I could answer with 10 minutes of research (or asking someone else) may cost my colleague an hour of lost productivity. Being mindful of this helps everyone, including yourself when the roles are swapped.
Each interruption is a drain on productivity, which costs the company money. What part about this do you not understand?
Getting "into the flow", or loading/reloading the details into your head typically takes 15 to 30 minutes for sufficiently intricate task or dataset. In such a context, a mere, "Hey, you got a minute?" is costly — more so, if i happens repeatedly during the day.
Treasure your freedom from such difficulties.
Allowing for constant interruptions under the guise of "collaboration" costs companies money. If you're in a management situation, you should know that your attitude will lead to waste.
You have no idea.
Thank god we have this WFH thing now. I can build this house of cards without anyone interrupting me saying I'm not building a house of cards.
I fully accept that programming is purely a mental task. I choose to think with others and then code in my own time. The tasks are now so short that there is literally no space for someone to interrupt.
Everything else is productivity theater.
Perhaps the culture within the company / department / team is to allow interruptions in the name of "collaboration". Hopefully the increased value gained by "collaborating" that way is worth the cost. Some of that cost is time (productivity), some is people literally quitting. Eventually you're left with a company full of people who don't mind being interrupted and I would assume are interrupters themselves, and I'd assume this effect is exponential, causing lower and lower productivity.
As a manager, you can't have this culture and then also complain about the lack of productivity, missed estimates, etc. (Well, you can, but that in turn will increase stress levels and unhappiness and cause more people to quit.)
Your competitor who sees collaboration is possible with planning, proper async communication channels, and some specific culture choices will have a nicer environment and happily hire away your most talented and knowledgeable people.
> where tens of hours of work will be completely lost if your concentration strays to show your face to another human being and utter a few words.
After being interrupted, it takes on average over 23 minutes [1] to get back on track. The average time lost is almost 3 hours per day, or 60 hours per month [2].
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/944128/worker-interrupted-cost-t...
[2] https://www.talkboxbooth.com/post/shocking-cost-workplace-di...
There is an even more special place in hell for PMs who schedule an additional regular status update meeting.
Also, what else are standups even for? Everything I've read or seen IRL is some bullshit about using them for teams to "align" or "sync up" or "share progress" or nine other euphemisms for status updates. Let's call a spade a spade.
Some people wear headphones simply because they want to listen to music or a podcast while they send/check email. Some people only put them on when they're in a meeting. And yes, some people wear them because they want to be left alone.
There are as many reasons to wear noise cancelling headphones as there are people wearing noise cancelling headphones, and assuming that everyone around you should know what it means to you is as insane as walking up to someone wearing noise cancelling headphones and asking for an update.
Well, someone could always say, sorry I thought those were just regular headphones. :)
Anyway, my philosophy is that I'm being paid by my employer not only to do work, but to help others do their job as well. I WANT to be the person that my co-workers are comfortable walking up to and asking questions even if I am in the middle of something. (Because I'm ALWAYS in the middle of something anyway.) It doesn't take many interactions like this before they start to associate you with the word "indispensable." Which is a good for job security and peer testimonials. And of course making friends.
https://www.headsetsdirect.com/product/poly-busy-light-strai...
We both learned something about the limits of my patience that day.
Here's a new idea, will it be adopted? Well does it increase office misery - then yes. If one idea gets past that goes the other direction its removal will be the most pressing management concern. Presently the biggest trend in the c-suite is how to end remote work in the face of all its positive metrics. Hot-desking, which has nothing positive about it for anyone, get behind it!
Let me guess: you did absolutely nothing?
These light trees used to be (and probably still are in some places) used for the purpose of incident management when in operations centers like NOCs or similar. It is tied to internal status and incident management systems.
Regardless, I'm struggling to know the audience here. Is it an employee in the office? If that’s the case, it won’t solve any problem because most of the disturbances happen from your boss either calling about something or asking you to join another useless meeting. Your boss won’t care about your status simply because they won’t be collocated in the same office as you most of the time (not that they care about your online status anyway). For colleagues, after the first month or so, everyone will pretty much find the best way to approach others. If you still need a device for that, then there’s a problem in communication that you need a persistent device all the time. At home, you won’t need such a thing. So I don’t know who will find it useful; it looks gimmicky. What’s next, a hat that will turn a green light telling people you are approachable or in the chatting mode, and red when you are not?!
So who is this device for again?
Hmm, you sure? I checked OP, it says "marketed for video conferencing"
> Recording studios have a solution.
Okay.
> And probably don't use pomedero.
*pomodoro
> And the reason for the indicator I assume is to stop people barging in and stop people saying silly stuff thinking their off air so it needs to be inside and outside the room.
Okay.
> So who is this device for again?
Video conferencing, ex. the above scenario you laid out
> I'm curious, I'm not just rushing through an attempt to correct something that doesn't need correction. How do they envision it in use?
Here's a link to the site, it has marketing material re: this. https://busy.bar/
In particular GP said:
> For colleagues, after the first month or so, everyone will pretty much find the best way to approach others. If you still need a device for that, then there’s a problem in communication that you need a persistent device all the time.
I think I agree. Back in 2003 my boss said "when my headset is on I am busy". He had to remind everyone a few times. But that worked.
It's telling that both obstinate refusals to not understand what its for end up on unrelated stories about bosses. Let's call it PHB derangement syndrome.
It never seemed likely it was that confusing, it's pretty hard to have been alive from 2020-2024 and claim that there's never any reason for anyone to know anyone else is on a video call. I guess I'm lucky I can take out my Monday scaries via pointing out the obvious, it'd suck to be on the other side and have to pretend I'm stupid.
No one's trying to lay claim to if this individual product "becomes Dropbox", and you're not saying you can build it in a weekend, which is the comment you're referring to.
I think you may be swapping in a bailey of "oh we're arguing about whether this will be "successful"" because the motte of "what is this for, it can't work!?" was obviously stupid, as you've ceded.
With the conraption here. It is not useless, sure, but that is not a high enough bar to use resources to manufacture it or for there to be a market for it. Other than someone mentioned geek consumerism.
You nerds will buy anything
The only product in this category I still use on the regular is https://boomkat.com/products/buddha-machine-special-edition-... and its predecessors.
I want a work-time tracker that lights a bright LED every 5 minutes or so, and as long as I'm there and working I smash a button and the light goes off for another 5 minutes. Some algorithm tracks the times I have hit the button and displays how long I have been working on said task.
I'm picturing something fairly cheap, like a stop watch or 3 button kitchen timer. A LED, a few buttons, a LCD display, a AAA battery slot, and an internal timing circuit is all that's needed (and a case to hold it together).
This would basically be a stop watch that stops on its own if neglected, and I can imagine a few uses for it.
My gut reaction and prejudiced against all lawyers is it's probably in the law firms interest that these are inaccurate.
In most cases working with a lawyer is a fixed fee or going to be on a retainer basis where the hours pile up regardless, not so much about tracking every moment for every person.
If I retain a lawyer at $1k an hour, you bet I want 5 minute billing.
I hate time tracking and time sheets and all of that but at any job I had where I would not get paid without it, it got done.
I set it to 15 minutes or it’s too frequent.
I’ve considered a hardware device (and have tried some) but I like to also track time in meetings, so I’d be lugging it around with me.
For a home-rolled solution, I use a GE CYNC ST19 Edison Style bulb in a socket right outside my office door. I have it configured through Home Assistant (https://www.home-assistant.io/), and then use Hammerspoon (https://www.hammerspoon.org/) on my macbook to make an API call to Home Assistant when the camera state changes.
If my camera turns on/off, so does the light bulb. Works really well for letting my family know I'm busy in meetings.
If I’m busy and if it happens so often that I can reliably buy a device like this, I would instead prefer to adjust my work environment to not be distracting, and to inform people that they should contact me at some other time.
I guess this may not always be an option.
Busy is the virture most people want to signal most of the time. Next time someone ask how things are tell people you are not busy, its elicits a similar response to telling people your distant uncle died.
Peope who do 0.8 hours work and collect a full time salary while playing golf and pretending they do 8 are rare I suspect.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/busy-work-productiv...
> having a hollow tube-like structure made from metal would be very wasteful because you would have to mill out the entire core (unless it’s cast metal?)
Basically, I'm saying those aren't the only options
Not exactly this but close: https://www.cleware-shop.de/USB_Tischampel_360
I have a lilygo T-Display (which costs less than a 10th of the Busy Status Bar), but I intended to use it untethered and freely movable on the desk. Sadly the battery life is so bad that I basically have to leave it plugged in all the time.
Since it's not mentioned in text, extrapolating from the photos (sometimes it's connected with a cable, sometimes not) I'd have to assume it has a battery.
https://busy.bar/blog/developing-the-mechanical-and-electric...
Juicero, where are you?
I am not advocating or praising this behavior; I was definitely going through my prima donna phase.
Later I became very timid about talking to people because the company culture was "if I have my headphones on, please don't interrupt me" but everyone had headphones on all the time because the office was a nightmare of noise and distraction.
The ubiquitous slack (or equivalent) channel has a lot of downsides, but when weighed against the alternatives, I think I like it the best. But I'm very conscious of the fact that not everybody's brain has the same attention system. I think that's one of the reasons this little device has generated so many strongly worded comments. It's probably neither the most rude thing ever nor the most helpful thing ever. What would be great for productivity and happiness would be if we could find a way not to force everyone to try to work under the same environmental constraints. (Aspirational: I don't know how to do this.)
For comparison, the Ulanzi TC001 mentioned throughout this thread is 32x8, for 256 pixels.
I think if one was wanting to build something like this for themselves that just using a 7" ips display intended for rpi would work as well. With 1024x600 resolution you could draw the chunky pixels if you wanted that aesthetic, and those can be had for like $28.
Software for Linux and Mac is here [0]. There's also an ESP32 for the sign, but that part is trivial (MQTT -> LED)
I have a “Back in…” analog clock sign on my door. It was a dollar.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_and_the_euro#Writte...
(To save a click: Netherlands plus Dutch-speaking half of Belgium, Austria, Cyprus, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, and Turkey are the Eurozone countries which write €1 - which is also the official way to write it in English. Edit: oops, Turkey should be with England in that it's not a Eurozone country, they have their own Turkish lira, but in their language Euro amounts should be written €10, even though lira amounts are written 10TL.)
I worked on a trading floor for several years - open floorpan is the right way for a trading operation to be set up because the whole nature of the job is to interrupt and be interrupted throughout the day. Not so for data science / AI / engineering work, unless it's a help desk, IMHO...
1: https://www.pomodorotechnique.com/pomodoro-trademark-guideli...
It looks like the inventor of the technique is now based out of Dubai (allergic to taxes? The governments that you lean on to enforce your reigstered trademarks need to be funded somehow).
I'm obviously a cheapskate.
Sure, some people will buy it even it was $2000, but I think most people will be put off by the ~$200 price.
(reminder that Android makes it trivial to not show notifications on the lock screen, or even in the top bar. I see notifications only when I want to.)
I made something similar with a blink USB light: https://blink1.thingm.com/ . I had a little sign that said "when it's red, I'm busy". And a keyboard shortcut to toggle it from red to green (it just ran a little bash script that invoked the blink CLI). It was duct-taped to my monitor so you could see it from far away.
It worked very well to prevent interruptions from other people walking up to my desk and chatting with me.
I never got to the point of having a USB light as a semaphore or anything like that, but I really wanted to find and hack a toy traffic light that would indicate if it was a good time to interrupt me or not. So yeah, it was a very real problem.
I didn't dare comment because it would be against the HN guidelines, but I fully agree. Once the novelty wears off it will turn into electronic waste.
Say more? What is the different problem?
If I'm at work and need to focus, noise cancelling headphones are a must. If they're off then I'm not busy.
That said, I really want something designed like this that I can use.
To me it looks like a very slick, hacker gadget built from a very enthusiastic person. Good finish and highly over-engineered. For me, as a user, it'd be too expensive, but my hacker soul could imagine building something like that too.
Nice product, but at that price point probably not for a big audience
However, I will say it depends a great deal on your coworkers/family as to whether they care that you're busy when they want to ask you something.
I hacked together a script to accomplish a similar thing.
In my case, I only consider myself “busy” when my camera is on, meaning no one should enter my office.
Also pomedero breaks are also busy. Having a break is something. Being interupted during that break is no better than being interuppted during the work part.
what I really want is a LED status display built into the top edge of my laptop screen (visible from opposite side too) that indicates -- when I am on a meeting / when I am muted or unmuted / when my camera is ON. (I should be able to turn them off when i dont need them and also have a manual override to turn them on as well -- so I dont HAVE to indicate my true status publicly when I dont want to -- I might even tie it to work only when on office/home wifi only for instance)
In WFH situations this would be a life saver as other people in the house might walk into your room / across your laptop in view of camera / want to talk to you about random things .... If this kind of busy indicator is present, those people can be a bit more mindful of your immediate situation and avoid distrubance / embarassment.
https://github.com/jareklupinski/count-down
google and apple dont make it easy...
Does this work without cloud-connection? Does it work with the Flipper Zero? Considering it's from the same company, I would think there is some synergy available. And it seems to lack a speaker. For some reason, I would love to play radio on it, not sure why..
EDIT Ok, found the speaker. Nice.
There's an ecosystem of open source firmware for it already.
But if you are hacker and don't care too much about the aesthetics you could probably get 90% of the functionality with an ESP32, a GPIO extender, an LED array, an OLED display and a 3D printed case for like $30.
As you said: A 90% solution is easy to hack together. I had mine displaying Skype for Business status so my colleagues would know if I was in a call or just listening to music.
The harder part or much rather the time consuming part is getting a good status message from the installed apps. It looks like there is plenty of software and APIs available.
8x 8x8 WS2812 Matrix $2 each = $16
ESP32 $3
1x some acrylic to laser-cut a case in a makerspace $5
So $24 total. The screen would be much larger than the Busy Bar version, which could be a pro or a con, depending on what you want.
If you need the smaller back screen (I don’t see the use because I would control it from a computer anyways), that would add another $3 or so. The buttons are basically free but if we assume $3, that’s $30 like you said in total.
LED Matrix: 5 for 6,33€ (that is 1,27€ each)
ESP32 C3 Supermini: 3 for 3,56€ (1,19€ each)
There’s scrap acrylic at my makerspace so I was guessing, make it 10€ and I’m at 23€ or so.
What numbers do you not believe?
Those generic "led pixel clock" tend to be about $50-$80 ish, and this looks like a 'nicer' (in some aspects) fancier, more niche version of that.
… and people will pay a lot for anything that tickles their idea of self-identity, allows them to project an image they find favorable, but taps in to some core utility that allows you to provide cover for the prior. See: Apple devices, fitness, business conferences, this device.
Would love to have one but.. can’t find a use-case for it
I've nothing but utmost love for Flipper Devices Inc., seeing their approach to PR and as a 1000% happy owner of a Flipper Zero that sits unused 99.99% of the time in my backpack (and boy, am I _extremely_ happy and relieved for the 0.01% when I need it). I would pull the trigger on this in a heartbeat if I had the play-cash.
For those specifically with productivity challenges, it seems to be a good opportunity to remind that there are simple techniques people can try out (even if I find hard to discipline myself to adhere to) like a programmer's anecdote of one of John Carmack's methods[0].
I have personally adapted that technique to buying a $20 (hour-long) sand timer and turning it to its side when I need to pause. Unfortunately, my challenge now is overcoming my reluctance to use it more often, dreading the commitment I am signing myself up for as soon as I start the timer and fear of failure. Alas, it appears that I allow that fear to control me (into shirking responsibility).
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30801421 (unfortunately, original source no longer has this entry published, and archive.org is still offline, so all I have is this HN post to cite :)
[edit]: https://archive.ph/kcKYY
I would love to have a companion device that I can stick to the outside of a closed office door
Would love to code/configure it with a middle finger emoji if I am in a call :)
The price is a bit high, but glad to see it in the real world.
Nyan cat does not add any value.
If it was $100 instead of $189, I would order two (one for me, one for partner) as soon as they were available.
I still receive messages, but only reply when contacting me through Teams is the agreed-upon approach. In other words, I simply don't reply to messages that should really be emails or tickets.
Super well done website, and the product itself looks very thoroughly polished.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1760749770/fisher-price-busy-bo...
Comedy ensues from the awkward reactions and fake apologies.
"Ah, sorry. I'm 'Busy' now." (Smirk)
> (Raises eyebrows) Uhh, okay sure Jim.
* the page loads quick - without overlays, distractions, etc. the page gets to the point, and fast
* immediately i see a description of what the product is...this might sound funny, but tons of product sites lack this most basic thing!
* In addition, the very brief video at the top shows a human hand operating the product...so i know even more about its functions, or at least how to interact with product
* a call-to-action of "BUY" is present and impossible to miss, positioned right after/below the product intro/description
* as i scroll down, the experience is NOT janky...its a smooth scroll down the page
* scrolling down informs me more about the product, including its features, different angles of the physical product (to help denote the features), they even squeeze in that there are developer options - so i'm tipped off that its not only a consumer device, but that it can be integrated with other systems, expanded by devs, etc.!
* they include more product photos in order to show how the product may appear and/or be used in real life
* they even include photo and description of certain features - which serve almost as a very brief user guide, but again, i'm sure the intent is to show off the product's feature set
There probably are other great things about this page that i have not noted here...But, again, kudos to the person/team who designed this! I see many teams that are really intelligent, and might have great products/service, but they don;'t include half the elements present here. Because while i don't have interest in this product, damn, this an extremely compelling experience for their product! Cheers and kudos to all involved!!!!!!!
https://imgur.com/a/9g1dGxp (default 100% zoom level)
It is totally defective in 100% zoom, I need to manually zoom to 90% to make it be usable/as designed.
It seems to activate cell phone mode for laptop screens.
Edit: I don't get why people are downvoting this (-4 and counting). I enter the site and it is broken, until I change to a non-default zoom level. Valuable feedback IMO
The feedback is valuable, but the way it's expressed leaves something to be desired.
I love the aesthetics and simplicity at display here. Very functional and just the right amount of information. Kudos to the Busy Status Bar team from here as well!!
Still it's interesting to me as a WFH person to potentially better delineate for myself focus mode.
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Did Hacker News turn into Daily Deals?
Regarding the original topic, I mostly work from home and even there like pomodoro timers because they help me focus. Set it for 25 minutes and focus until the time is up, take 5, then get back to it. Works great for me!
Yes it's awesome to collaborate with people but if you find a workplace that ignores human factors of knowledge workers, and deters and deep focus, that is a negative signal about that employer. Egs:
* a noisy, open, "pit" with low/no partitions, where sales guys yell into speakerphones right near people heads down
* there are no "focus booths" to make private calls or work
* meeting load is scattered across the day so there's no way to block out working time on calendar
* adversarial IT dept
I wouldn't mind working hybrid and going to an office 2-3 days/week as long as the commute was under 20 minutes.
Whenever I see someone with a busy light in the office, I view it as an over-the-top, attention-grabbing, awkward human interaction and an explicit invitation to bother him or her.
It's "don't make me tap the sign" in electronic form.