Making an “LED Status Alerter” for Your Home Office

With many people now working from home, interruptions from family members have become a regular part of the workday. For some folks that is not a huge issue, but others may need to remain focused and let the rest of the household know they are unavailable. Our LED Status Alerter project gives a quick Green / Yellow / Red indication so children, spouses, or others know if you are available, or, tied up and not able to help out or answer questions. Using a Raspberry Pi and some LEDs, or a larger light-stack as would be used on industrial machinery, we have hacked together a "Status Indicator" that you control via a basic web page. We will walk you through the build, and once complete, you can let your household know when it's ok to interrupt, or, when they'll need to come back later!

What are the problems you aim to help solve with this project?:
This project is a fun way to build a device that gives a visual indication to family members (especially kids) about when it is ok to come and ask questions, ask for help with things, or when they will need to wait a bit until you are available. Sharing a house with children while also trying to get work done and talk on the phone, video conference with customers, partners, or managers and bosses, or meet deadlines is difficult, but this project aims to make it just a bit easier.