I do podcasting as part of my work-from-home job and my wife and I homeschool our kids, which means I need a way to let everyone know when they should not knock on my office door. With everyone working and schooling from home these days, I have a feeling others need something similar too.
Long story, short: I bought an inexpensive wall light and a Philip Hue color bulb, then use the Hue API and Keyboard Maestro to set up a series of automations that turn on the bulb and set it to red (i.e. do not disturb except in emergency) whenever I turn on my mixer and then used the Elgato Streamdeck to (a) provide an indicator when the light is on and (b) allow me to turn it on to yellow (i.e. I’m working, but it’s okay to interrupt) manually.
Here’s my writeup of what I did.