Live data from Hacker News

Busy Status Bar

busy.bar

161–170 of 546 posts

Re: Busy Status Bar

#161

I might buy this to use as follows. 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 but…

Make it a fidget toy and you're onto something.

A big satisfying button to push is welcome.

Re: Busy Status Bar

#162
post #96

Where has the practice of putting the $ behind the value come from? I see it happening to £ too. I'm irrationally annoyed by this.

It's standard for Euro amounts and before that for many (most?) European currencies.

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.

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.)

Re: Busy Status Bar

#163
post #56

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.

On the image which shows the back screen, you can also see a battery icon in the lower right, so that's a very safe bet.

Re: Busy Status Bar

#164

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!

Do you mean metal as in the material? Where do you see that?

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.

Re: Busy Status Bar

#165
post #91

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…

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.

Re: Busy Status Bar

#166
post #91

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…

ahh that's incredible. I've attempted similar projects with various devices over time. this looks cool!

Re: Busy Status Bar

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Busy Status Bar

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post reply on HN