This is at least the 3rd version of this product idea that I’ve seen in the past decade. Certainly the nicest design!
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.
>This product looks more versatile. Being able to automatically tie it to meeting status or set pomodoro timers could make it more interesting.
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
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.
I have checked your busy / free calendar information and it seems you do nothing around here. We thank you for your service but it is no longer required at this organisation.
I obviously cannot speak for every business in every country, but at least in those I’ve worked at, you’d never get fired for based solely on the number of available slots in your calendar.
Yea I always try to block off at least two days a week (ideally 3) of complete focus and move meetinga, conversation etc in other days. Both are useful and are needed
I would probably buy a device like this not to show status to others but to myself;
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.
That is certainly an issue. However, in reference to this design, I don't understand the point of having apps like weather and notifications if the large screen that would display such things is meant to face away from you so that others can see your status.
It is an LED screen that I can put anywhere. While the intention is as a busy screen, it can be utilized in a variety of ways. So, ultimately, why not?
But that will open up the market for a "Seriously Guys, I'm Actually Really" device that can be attached on the left-hand side, and activated when you really mean it.
I’m constantly looking for a physical worktime chronometer. I’d like to track how much I work, and leave after my 7 hours, or log extra time if I overdo it.
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 wrote a free app [1] for the Stream Deck (not Steam Deck!), with which I can start Clockify timers with a press of a physical button. Yes, Clockify can do more than just checking in and out, but for the simple use case it's free to use and has an API.
I use an app called aTimeLogger on Android that just pins a little notification with a play/pause and stop button, and a little time counter. When I start working, I hit play. When I take a break, I hit pause.
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.
You'd need to have it be host specific. Stack overflow? You're researching a problem and still might be elbows deep in a problem. Bluesky or FB? Not so much.
That’s the problem: If the light is always on, or almost always on, then it quickly loses meaning.
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.
I dunno guys, I've become really, really used to the whole "wired in" protocol where if you have fully over-ear headphones on, it means you are either in heads-down coding or writing mode, or you are on a call. It works as long as everyone observes it. But maybe they don't and hence the demand for this product. It just adds another layer of complexity to office politics.
Side note to people reading this: in general, when suspecting a scam, don't blindly trust anyone who says "I'm ... and I confirm this is OK". This may be the same very person who you're suspecting of original scam ;). Not a theory, I have cases looks this every other week in my dayjob.
It might ring better for the cypherpunks here that zhovner has verified their HN account ownership with their keybase GPG key, which can only be done by editing an account's profile description to include a specific signature (or by defacing HN / breaching the account). And the same key is also used to prove ownership of their Github account and website.
Idea of Flipper Zero was to lower our guard and trust their company with security, while actually shipping hardware with backdoors -- which the Flipper Zero will, for some reason, not be able to detect.
More important note to people reading this: use your brain. Is it likely that a scammer will create an extremely professional website and product, and then their scam is that ride the coat tails of another brand and try to keep that scam up with Hacker News comments?
(I think lots of HN people have issues with reality so just in case the answer is: absolutely not.)
Yes, actually. Well, everything except the last point. If you're unfamiliar with UFO 50, it's a recent collection of games inspired by 80s-esque computer game design. The reason why I bring this up is because there's a website (ufo50.net) which is actually fake and completely unrelated to the actual ufo50 site (50games.fun) which is designed to be SEO-bait so that it can absorb traffic from search engines.
Same, except the last point, I feel like I've seen that pattern multiple times. And it's not like it's expensive to do (presumably unless you get sued or something).
Well that's not the same is it? They aren't creating a whole new extremely professional product and just saying "made by OtherBrand"; they just cloned a website (probably using an LLM).
So yes except for the last point, and also the other points...
A version of this that would be useful for WFH or private offices is an 'on air' device that you could mount outside your office door, which means it's not connected to your computer and could potentially run on a battery for a week+ or run on usb power directly.
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.
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.
This product (1) is not just for Pomodoro and (2) has nice tactile hardware.
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.
Ahh, the inevitable slippery slope of feature requests. Making hardware for geeks is a tough business because they’ll always say they’d buy it if it had just one or two more features, but by the time you add all of the feature requests they complain that it’s too expensive.
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.
I think you're missing the obvious play to subsidize the price by making that LLM enabled with a mic and then selling all of that training data. The price could then come down to $19.99.
It looks gorgeous, especially the hardware. I think the typeface on the hardware and the retro busy text could be further refined, but it is very very cool overall.
I'd love for this thing to be feature-flexible enough to use it for the exact opposite: running TV/screen/videogame timer for the kids!
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.
Funnily, the way I used to check Keybase profiles is to check Twitter because a blue checkmark there was usually a good indication of them being "the famous person" but thanks to Twitter Blue that feature is no longer usable.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
"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."
And interestingly none of the socials I could find are mentioning it.
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
Every scam website ever made that pretends to be part of a known business copies that business's footer text, it's not remotely relevant in trying to judge whether a website is telling the truth or not about who owns it.
(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.)
Actually fake ones will inevitably show "(c)" because they couldn't get authorization for the copyright key. If you zoom in you can see the gaps in the circle betraying the deception.
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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If you're looking for something with an addressable LED matrix in a clock style form factor, the Ulanzi TC001 [0] for ~$50 is worth having a look at.
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.
I was going to say that $200 seemed awfully expensive for a programmable kitchen timer.
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."
I'm assuming the child is question is not so much adversarial so much as ADHD. They'll be actively looking to divert their attention to more stimulating activities than playing an instrument but not attempting to cheat the system. And I'm assuming a parent is present but not necessarily in full control of the child. Or it could work equally well for an adult in a similar situation.
Hate to burst your bubble, but as an amateur musician I fear this would backfire, or at least fail to result in any improvement in playing ability. Silence and time are absolutely critical to playing music. By analogy, measuring 'time spent drawing bow across strings' would be as useful to a violin student as 'time spent pressing foot on accelerator' would be to a driving student!
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.
There could be an allowance for time spent not playing music. Keep the timer going for a few minutes after the music has stopped. Require a minimum ratio of music playing time to overall time. So, after a lengthy silence, only playing music will advance the timer.
"Identifying Different Musical Instrument Sounds Using Fourier Analysis in LabVIEW"
Rather than "ML" du jour, I would say that a fast Fourier transform would get you sufficient data to determine if practicing or talking or silence.
Definitely valid callout. I was also looking for an excuse to play with audio ML, but you're totally right that just examining a Fourier series could very likely do a great job of determining whether a given type of instrument is being played.
The ESP32S(1?) that's inside is fairly powerful as embedded mcus go but that said...
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.
The Ulanzi TC001 is a great, cheap piece of hardware. I found a second-hand one for $20 and flashed it via USB with https://github.com/lubeda/EspHoMaTriXv2, a more practical firmware if you already have a bunch of ESPHome devices at home.
Neat! This is very close to what I want. I am looking for a very affordable device like this to affix to my home office doors. I would like it to be programmable allowing me to set the status to Don't Enter when I am having a Zoom call, etc.
This looks great! I've considered building a simple device with an LED matrix that looks similar to this, but could never figure out what gives the LEDs the muted look. All of the devices mentioned here (Tidbyt Gen2, Lamarca, Ulanzi, even the busy.bar) have it. Is the back-pannel just an LED matrix with a custom acrylic in front of it? How do they ensure the light from individual LEDs doesn't bleed into its neighbor?
I wouldn't swear to it but from mine it looks like there's a grid of light guides between the led PCB and the front screen to prevent any cross bleed. The front screen is translucent but not transparent (think heavy tinted window) acrylic which gives it the muted look.
It's pretty good hardware wise, it would be hard to knock up DIY for $50 even just in BOM.
As I'm too late to edit - if you use it in a setting where it's always powered, you might want to consider removing the battery as a safety measure. It's a fairly simple hardware hack, various YouTube videos and blogs on the subject.
Yes, exactly, thank you! I have a Tidbyt that I enjoy but it's pricy and has a subscription local API. I thought the thing in the OP might be a discount smart home alternative and was hoping to find exactly this kind of alternative recommendation in the comments.
Neat! Can't tell if it has a speaker at the back or not. Would like to play sounds or alarms...
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.
+1 for the hot garbage piezo, but as OP says the ESP32 has a lot of fun hacking potential and there's plenty of space in the case especially if you remove the battery.
This looks exactly what I have been looking for to put outside of my home office to keep my family from interrupting me during work meetings. Thanks for sharing it!
The “Live on air!” sign that triggers with Zoom (or Slack) is a very common usecase.
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!
If the big display is supposed to face away from you towards visitors, why are the controls oriented for them too. Surely you want to control the device, not your visitors?
and why does it have 'how to connect' plastered all over its supposedly user-facing back? why have initial setup stuff end up just being always there? or more annoyingly, exposed for others to fiddle with it? (if it's gonna be used in places with other people around)
This reminds me of my first job in London looking after the network of a recruitment agency. The consultants got headsets for the first time and one got so annoyed about being interrupted when on a call - because you couldn't tell when people were wearing headsets the whole time - that she taped a big bit of card to the top of her headset saying "ON A CALL" that she could flip up and down depending on whether she was speaking to someone.
I had a coworker who felt free to interrupt me at any time. Even if I were frowning and leaning in to read some code word for word, he’d stop by to talk about nothing. I started wearing headphones when I was in concentration mode and that didn’t help. Then I wrote “DO NOT DISTURB” on a post-it note, stuck it to my headphones, and dug in for some thought-intensive hacking. He came to my desk, pulled the note off the headphones I wore, and tapped me on the shoulder, laughing. “Hah, look what someone taped to your head!”
We both learned something about the limits of my patience that day.
... or you could have communicated your boundaries & expectations first thing and explicitly instead of doing this weird song and dance and complain on hacker news about it afterwards?
Surely it would be closer to justice if one were to dispatch the various management gurus and architects who claimed open plan was acceptable and any CEO who agreed with that garbage?
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!
I can remember people using various USB "busy lights" since way back in the Skype for Business days. And one of our super old offices has an 80s style wired green/yellow/red light indicator outside of the door, that presumably used to connect to a switch on the desk.
> And one of our super old offices has an 80s style wired green/yellow/red light indicator outside of the door, that presumably used to connect to a switch on the desk.
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.
I used one of those recently at home since my wife can't see my screen, she's not sure if I'm on a call, listening to music or just there. The built in software sucks, but there are some good open source options https://github.com/JnyJny/busylight also works together with https://mutedeck.com/ for supporting things like Zoom.
Easy fix. Call the person when tbey are on a call. If engaged tbey will be engaged. Then move that person to a house in the suburbs where their kids bappen to also live.
On the one hand I love single-focus nicely designed hardware. On the other hand I have a https://getfocustimer.com/ gathering dust, because a timer is just easier to set from the computer + screen I am already looking at...
Yes, my experience as well. That's why having an alternate small display (8" or smaller) for your laptop/desktop is better. You can then drag any application on it and use it as a timer or busy sign or whatever. It's way more convenient than an extra device you have to reach and fiddle with.
A bit dystopian turning people into a taxi-like system where you need an indicator to tell if they are vacant or not.
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?!
Yes, it's so horrible, just like the on air signs in audio recording rooms from the 1920s are very dystopian, so bad. It's not like everyone is working from home now.
It should supplement and facilitate improved office dynamics and less interruptions rather than supplant interaction with proscribed, transactionalized objectification of people. Not everything more efficient should or has to be dystopian.
After reading the page, it seems clear it is akin to a recording studio busy signal, well-trodden territory predating computers, and marketed for video conferencing. Neither without target audience, nor a sigil of the fall of interhuman cooperation and communication :)
You have not said what the market is. Recording studios have a solution. And probably don't use pomedero. 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.
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/
For context, we are replying to a comment putting that marketing into question. Therefore the "RTFA" card is not in your deck to play. (I say with a tongue in cheek tone: no flamewar intended!)
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.
Reductio ad absurdum: If its for recording studios, fine. If not, get off my lawn, its just reinventing having a conversation.
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.
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.
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.
I’ve got this, just some simple JS that flashes bgcolor when the time is up, and I click to extend. I just keep a tiny thin browser on my laptop display
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.
I assume lawyers have some mechanism like this already. Law firms can require staff to allocate every 6-8 minutes of their day. Which sounds terrible and likely to be wildly inaccurate as people cannot be bothered to invest that much overhead into their job.
This is how Swiss medical appointments are billed. I forget exactly how granular, but it's pretty small - 5-10 minutes. As a result, you tend to be quite efficient when going to the GP, because it’s a few Francs a minute
If I retain a lawyer at $1k an hour, you bet I want 5 minute billing.
For sure that seems the intention. Create an “audit trail” for billing while simultaneously making it so onerous that the employees have to fudge the numbers.
In my experience it just means a lawyer marks each hour via charging you 10 increments, and that in some cases some forms of comms are generally charged at a sub-hourly charge.
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.
Add an alarm to play VERY LOUD if the button is not pressed in a 5-7 minute window to keep you working. If you fail to do so the entire office/house has to hear your alarm going off
It’s very pretty; but it’s also a little sad - that there could be demand for a big red flashing IRL “busy” indicator.
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.
> sad - that there could be demand for a big red flashing IRL “busy”
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.
Depends what you mean by busy. I use the "free" designation option to plan work in my shared calendar. I am busy but I am also free for a meeting if needed. In server parlence this might be an async batch processing job.
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.
At this point I don’t care if it cures cancer. There’s zero chance I’d ever buy it or even look at that page now. We get it. It exists. Stop spamming it.
We used to have something similar at one of my previous jobs, a piece of paper that was red on one side, if red side was up on the desk, you don't disturb them.
The mode where it sits on a monitor and displays a status ("on call") is very interesting. I think that could be simplified into a product unto itself -- but it would need to priced at "office toy" level -- so around $20-$40 USD.
I was gonna seriously consider it for $89. But then I noticed it’s $189. Hard pass. It’s a shame because it’s a neat idea. I’d be ok even with just some core functionality
I'm a sucker for metal things with greebling. The price seems pretty fair for how niche this is; I totally expected Teenage Engineering prices. (Also in the field of greebled single use devices with knobs and the mass of a blunt-force-weapon) Will totally pick one up for the hardware's skookumosity and hackability poetential alone!
It definitely looks to be made of a metal. To be fair, I'm just basing that off the texture and specular highlights in the photos. It's pretty similar looking to the iMac's case in one of their photos.
I would actually bet it’s plastic, 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?). Also, the texture looks much coarser than the iMac, there are large „bumps“ on the surface. If it’s really a milled aluminum case, I would at least understand the price, but I would be very surprised. My bet would be a simple injection moulded ABS case.
Sheet metal can be wrapped around a mold (round, square, or other) and pressed together, though it's not common. I've got a couple diy electronics protected by "boxes" made of U-shaped steel or aluminum with holes cut for the controls. Alternatively, the technique used to create cardboard boxes also works with sheet metal, where you cut the correct shape out and fold the flaps at set locations; of the metal is thick enough you don't need flaps and it'll hold the shape on its own, and if you want to hide the seams better, use compression or notches.
When looking at the edges, it looks very thick though, no? That doesn’t look like wrapped around sheet metal to me, unless that’s border where some metal is pulled inwards like when making a soda can.
I got a giant usb-controlled traffic light at my first job in Germany for a customer project. They just let me keep it after the project finished, which made me repurpose it as a busy light and it worked wonders except that one person who didn't get the hint.
Jerks and dorks disrespect others, with the differentiator being intention. If they don't get the hint, then it's probably time for a teachable moment or assertion of boundaries.
If I'm in an open office and can set my status clock on top of a monitor, then I don't need the manual controls because I will be changing it via the computer. If I'm not using a computer and setting the device down on my desk in a cubicle, then the primary screen is going to be turned towards me and I will need to use the manual controls. For that specific set of use cases, I see the logic behind the manual control label positions.
Where does it draw power from? Does it have to be permanently connected or does it have a battery?
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.
> Where does it draw power from? Does it have to be permanently connected or does it have a battery?
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.
The natural follow up would be: How often do I have to plug it in? If I have to charge it daily it is probably too much of a hassle and I'll have to have it plugged-in all the time.
This is an instant buy for me. I've been looking for a 'smart timer' that I can interact with programmatically and via Home Assistant for the longest time. I'd resigned myself to either building a terrible version myself or hiring someone to make a bespoke one. I'm super glad you're making this!
The display is a resolution of 72x16, or 1152 px. I counted; there's a couple of frames as the first "busy" mention displays that the splashing animation lights the entire panel.
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.
Nice product, I built a similar (but less flexible) system for an "ON AIR" sign that I have in my home office, as both my wife and I WFH, it is nice to have a visual indicator when one of us joins a call.
Software for Linux and Mac is here [0]. There's also an ESP32 for the sign, but that part is trivial (MQTT -> LED)
I would buy it but first
i would like to see a youtube video from someone that got his life
change by this and things, i am yet not convinced
is this life changing?
Doesn't the large "Start/Pause" button on top invite for any Product Owners or other managers to walk by, hit the button, and start talking to you? Knowing my manager would.
This is an excellent idea. A similar approach, simpler, and cheaper solution for a non-open cube/offices environment is a microcontroller-controlled Andon stack with color-codes for "focusing/DND", "working", "away", "socialization desired", and possibly "about to leave". This makes it possible to scan statuses simply without disturbing people by having to be in visual range of their desk.
I quite like the large format for a timer. I have some much lower tech alternative that works wonders for helping keep me focused on tasks: https://www.timetimer.com/
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.
Truly, it's so hard for me to not see this as just dressed-up techie-flavored consumerism. If you can't look at your phone to run a timer without getting distracted, I think there's a different problem to solve.
(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.)
Feels like a problem in search for a solution to me. Although I haven’t worked in an office for a while now, so it could be that I’m not understanding the importance in such setting (or whatever is this device’s target use environment) that can’t be replaced with a sticky note.
I don't work in an office anymore either, but when I did (years ago), I would get constantly interrupted by people walking up to my desk and talking to me. I like talking to people but I also need uninterrupted focus time.
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 had the same issue when I was in an office and we were getting close to a deadline, so everyone was constantly chatting about this and that to unblock themselves. It's understandable when the rhythm of the office gets to that point that people want answers now, but it would get to ridiculous levels where you couldn't focus for 10 minutes before somebody else came by with a question.
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.
Geez the creator obviously doesn't think this is a necessity. It's just introducing a little whimsy and fun. Nobody cares if you don't want to buy or use it.
It looks very neat, and I love all the physical controls, but it seems like kind of a device from another time where everyone worked in-person all the time. I work a hybrid schedule, with a mostly distributed team, and hotdesk/hotel when I'm in the office, so I don't have the luxury of a physical device to indicate my status, nor much use for one.
That said, I really want something designed like this that I can use.
Oh my, this is something I've been wanting to create. Something simple like an illuminated on-air sign outside my office door. This is awesome, and awesomely over-engineered.
Check out BlyncLights from Embrava. Much simpler and cheaper. I've installed them in a few companies and have one at home so my wife knows when I'm in a meeting or free.
This looks really cool. Would have bought it but the price is a bit too high for me (I live in New Zealand as well so when you convert from USD then add shipping costs etc...).
In the monitor screenshot it occured to me that you need to choose back or front. But in most open offices you will probably need a 360 dispaly. A circle design that scrolls might work.
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.
I wouldn't have thought this kind of thing would be useful, but after trying a few pomodoro timers I ended up with one (TimeTimer Plus) that is so large that it had the unanticipated benefit of notifying others how long I'll be busy.
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.
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
I recall seeing little USB lights on Amazon that accomplished the same thing for $30. Turn red when your calendar/webcam is active, green when free. Of course, I would be suspicious of the software integration privacy, but different problem.
That's one of many features listed on this page, and they say there's an API for it suggesting that many more features are possible. I wouldn't expect every feature to be for everyone.
At this price, you can get a second Monitor facing outward and display how long you’ll be busy on that. In fact, you can get 2 monitors and another computer and have some change left. This is a cool product, especially design-wise, but there are much cheaper solution for this very small problem.
Interestingly, this "official" Pomodoro site doesn't offer a physical timing device on their shop page.
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).
OMG, I love this. The one missing feature: a high quality camera. As soon as I saw the screen mount, I immediately thought of Continuity Camera, which is a great solution for people who want decent video without a full streamer rig.
i thought someone had finally productized a clock i built for myself a long time ago, which, instead of showing you the time of day, counts down to your next meeting
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..
Seems like quite a bit of hardware engineering went into the design.
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.
A few years ago, I built a simpler version of that device myself.
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.
The Ulanzi TC001 devices are kind of near (without the double screen and all the buttons and stuff) for around $50. IIRC they have an ESP32 and have at least 1 or 2 alternative opensource firmwares.
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.
It is a bit pricey, but probably not overpriced. This kind of niche product is not going to get good economies of scale, those custom molded plastic parts are going to get pretty expensive when not being produced by the million.
Price is high … but the right price is the price people are willing to pay.
… 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.
This seems like an item that business would buy in bulk. $180 for single dev version, $90 each in packs of 10. Customized with your company branding maybe.
Back when I worked in an office and had to do deep thinking without interruptions, I'd string up a bit of yellow police-like tape that I stole from the SGI offices that were closed during Shoreline concerts that said "SILICON GRAPHICS". Worked perfectly.
This is incredibly similar to a personal project I've been prototyping. I love that Flipper brought it to market and will buy one. A fully open source & open hardware timer like this would be awesome. Cheaper DIY kit with 3d printable case. Does anyone know if one exists?
I suffer from ADHD and the pomodoro timer part interests me. However, I am not sure if a pomodoro timer would help me. And $200 is an expensive gamble.
(This isn't necessarily directed at you; just at the last minute thought to look for any top-level posts talking about this aspect. Much thanks for the piggyback! :pray:)
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 :)
Good call on being cautious here. Unfortunately, there isn't anything between this product and the most basic, basic, basic timer for you to test out if the pomodoro method would work for you.
Rad device! Not here to gripe about the actual price - and I realize it's counter-intuitive since we say "one hundred dollars" out loud - but in the US, the dollar sign goes before the amount: $189 not 189$
So this is a cloud connected LED sign that tells people to ~~fuck off~~ leave me alone. For 189 USD. This is the most Hacker News thing I've seen in 2024.
In a way it's the perfect product if your target market is those responsible for the atrocities of the modern web: like why I need a cloud-connected smartphone app that requests full permissions to set up a $10 camera.
"that's my pomodoro timer, it's from a Russian company that specializes in devices that enable various forms of cybercrime. you may have heard of the widespread wave of fraud circa 2019"
They all do too to varying degrees. You can say "X enables cybercrime" and "Y enables more cybercrime than X" and both could be true for any given X and Y.
For instance, someone buying a flipper is far more likely to do something illegal with it than someone buying a soldering iron. Both could be used only for legal purposes too, of course.
For every news story you can find of someone doing a legal thing with a flipper I can find you at least 10 stories of someone doing something illegal with it. Same for metasploit, nmap is borderline, and soldering irons not so much.
For every news story you can find of someone driving down the highway, I can find you at least 10 stories of someone crashing and burning in a multi-car pileup.
The company makes Flipper Zero as well. When they launched that product, the same topic came up [0]. The strongest argument given seems to hinge on the former nationality/residence of many of the original team. Obviously, different people will weight that above or below the UK address / USA incorporation.
the original team is Russian, but they downplay that a lot now (until you buy one and the promo stickers are in Russian). yes, they're registered in Delaware, almost every company that operates in the US is, including foreign companies.
The majority of Eurozone countries do put the numbers before the €, but it's not standard across the continent, each country has their own standard and some of them do have the euro sign first.
(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.)
With all the controls and lights to fiddle with, this Busy Bar hanging off a techbro monitor... is kinda like the Busy Box that was hanging off their crib.
I kind of want to see a parody video in an office where whenever someone walks up to the guy's desk with this thing, he flips it to "Busy" right as they walk up.
Comedy ensues from the awkward reactions and fake apologies.
Separate of the product itself...I have to compliment whoever designed the landing page! I'm not a UX/UI/page design expert, but here is what i experience:
* 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!!!!!!!
One thing missing though is the why. It took me a while to realise this is intended for people in open plan offices to communicate when they are disturbable.
Still it's interesting to me as a WFH person to potentially better delineate for myself focus mode.
Agree, except the product price could be right on the buy button. Now the analytics won't tell you whether I clicked on the buy button with an intent to buy, or did I just want to know how much it is.
Although i'm 50/50 on showing the price on the button, i absolutely see your point! I think for devices that are "known" - like, say, a pair of headphones - i suppose i might want to know the price right away...however, for other "unknown" devices, i'd actually like to learn more about the product, its features, maybe use-cases, etc...and as one other person rightly noted even the "Why" i might want/need the product...then again, all of this info could still be shown, and displaying the price shouldn't harm that...so yeah, i gues you're right: they should show the price on the button. :-)
Agree completely - so much I just had to echo your observations ;-)
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!!
Its funny you mention the aesthetics, because that's actually what i really liked from the get-go...and then started noticing all this niceties that i listed above (and more i'm sure). Like you, i'm loving the aesthetics!
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 functionality is a small screen with a timer and a few API calls to set the timer for you sometimes. $189 for a timer is not a lot of functionality for more than 1% of the annual salary of a minimum wage worker. You can get a full android phone for that much which has 10000x the functionality.
I downvoted this because it is really pejorative to call people sad in this way for doing their jobs. Though I do agree that it stinks sometimes to be focused and have people walk by and cause context shifts.
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!
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.
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.
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