For meetings I now have 3 effects.
1. At 1 minute to meeting start the meeting subject is announced on Sonos speakers to awake me from focus. This uses Node to query my Office365 calendar.<p>2. Two Pi Zeros with LED hats light up during Zoom meetings. This uses the Zoom APIs to receive webhook events that are published to MQTT. The PIs listen to MQTT and adjust the light colors.<p>3. I have a color changing Pac-Man Ghost light behind me that turns off during video meetings. In this case, my home automation system listens to MQTT events and turns the plug off and on.<p>Extra. I used the Node/Office365 calendar querying to light up PI LEDs for wife’s meetings and kid’s meetings. I didn’t feel like trying to deal with another company’s Teams API or school’s Zoom settings. The kids meetings were also announced over Sonos in the area of home they were working. It worked well enough we didn’t have to look after them every time class started.
The top answer on SO that I found (<a href="https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/344463/91434" rel="nofollow">https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/344463/91434</a>) also uses this way of determining whether the device is being used - is that really the best way, or is there anything to actually query the device? E.g. my webcam has a light already that is only active when images are being captured(?), shouldn't it be possible to query that bit of information directly?
It's a real shame, that USB-Hub manufacturers do not in general implement the Per-Port-Power-Control part of the spec. That would be so useful to controlling 5V/12V powered devices. With QC3.0 to barrel-jack-12V adapters a USB-HUB with PPPC(and QC3) would be a godsend.
I switched over to using a camcorder with a power switch and electric lens cover. It sits on small tripod behind my monitors, has far better color correction/white balance controls than most webcams out there that I’m aware of. But it makes it quite evident when it’s in use vs not, as the physical lens cover is electronically tied to its power status (automatically shuts when off) and the device is not present to the OS at all when device is powered off. So far zero problems with using it and OBS when flipping its power state back and forth multiple times in a day. Teams/Windows handles the presence/absence gracefully and quickly. It’s also nice to have an IR remote for it, though I rarely use it. I think the only thing to watch out for in this set up - that is potentially inherently worse than a webcam - is latency of video signal. You get what you pay for in cameras, so a cheap camcorder outputting over hdmi may introduce unbearable latency in video signal.
Seems so much effort was spent on the lighting of a sign. Put it on a smart switch with a spare USB power adapter - I'm sure the author has a dozen - and control it via rest, MQTT, HomeAssistant, anything.<p>Pros: Not physically tied to PC.
Cons: Another wifi device, unless you've already got a z-wave/zigbee stack setup you can piggyback on.