the first and only on-air-sign prototype

Fight WFH disruptions by building your own On-Air sign

A simple DIY project using Arduino and LED matrix. It may not stop your kids from disrupting you, but it may make them feel bad when doing so.

Somewhere around March 2020, here in Israel nearly everyone who could were sent to work from home. Being a programmer and having years of WFH experience it should have been the easiest transition, or that at least what I thought. The one (actually four) thing I didn’t take into account was that this time, there will be 4 extra people at home, my beautiful wife and our three children. between the 50th and the 100th time being interrupted during a call I thought that there must be a product that will signal to everyone around when its not a good time to be interrupted. Failing to find anything that seemed suitable, I thought (like many times before) – “I can just make one, how complicated can it be?!”
 

The solution

The idea is pretty simple, a sign that can be located in a way that potential interrupters (AKA: kids) can see and using some voodoo magic will know if I am in a call and reflect this status is way they cannot ignore.

The one I built has two parts: An Arduino-controlled LED matrix and a monitoring software running on your working computer. The monitoring software is checking the status of your microphone and speakers (or any other audio device you are using) and is telling the Arduino component if you are currently listening or talking, so the Arduino displays a very visible animation on the LED matrix, and everyone can be aware that you are “on-air”.

I made a short video showing how it works, which is unfortunately only available in Hebrew, but should be fairly easy to understand even so.

 

 

How to build one of your own

 

The code and design are publicly available, so if you have some basic technical skill (or just enough motivation), you can build your own On-Air sign and are certainly welcome to do so.

I have made a detailed step by step guide to build it, prepare and burn the correct software, you can find it along with the code here: The complete guide

If you also have better sense for visual design than me (most likely) I strongly encourage to build / 3d print or figure a way to make a more compact and aesthetic packaging. If you do – I’d appreciate if you send me an image to publish here.

 

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