Busy Bar
That hand... it's totally in the uncanny valley of hand motion.
I wouldn't buy this because of the price tag but I love the industrial design of this thing! I wish there were more things like this (albeit more practical) that I would like to upgrade my desk with.
The back of the device is so "busy" with all the text, it's almost anti-productive. Especially if you have to stare at it hanging off your monitor.
Why put the ugly bits right in front of your face?
Back in my day the arrogant devs just used printer paper and a hand drawn sign saying "GO AWAY!" taped to the back of their chair.
That is probably the coolest sales pitch page I have seen. Love the design and animations.
It's the Juicero of whatever market this is.
I recently set up a "busy" indicator using Home Assistant (HA) and the Home Assistant Companion app for macOS. The desktop app exposes various MacBook sensors to HA, which can then trigger automations.
When my microphone activates, it triggers an automation that powers a socket. A red LED lamp lights up, signaling to everyone that I’m on a call or recording a video.
you dont need all of that to improve focus. start with 30 seconds, clear your mind, set a timer for 30 seconds, sit in a corner and start meditating. the challenge is that as soon as you think of something inside your mind, stop the timer. do this daily and your meditation times will slowly improve and your focus will come back
This feels like something one could easily procrastinate with (customizable, developer-friendly...).
I don't know why but that video on the homepage (third media item from top) split me up for how rude/brash it came across.
The mans thrusting his palm out in front of the colleague, slapping the top of his alarm clock, the woman's exaggerated third person glance and swift exit.
I can only imagine it's followed by a complaint to HR or gossip, with the man on the laptop quickly becoming a hate-figure in the office.
Surely a polite decline is the exact same thing.
Is it me or is the top interface oriented the wrong way? You want to have the big screen pointed away from the user and all of the top controls are facing/written to the audience.
This should be a $4.99 app on a smartphone and/or desktop and doesn't take up any space.
Related but different better time/social management physical device for cube land would be an Arduino, a button, and an 4-7 color andon tower representing states such as:
- Working
- Lunch or errand (will return)
- Out-of-office (not returning for the day)
- Working remotely
- DND
- Open to socializing
- On vacation
And then a glossary for definitions posted prominently on the cube/office and on the intranet portal personal page. No app, no internet connectivity, no security vulnerabilities, no complexity, and <$20.
This is from Flipper Devices, who make the Flipper Zero.
That's a lot of distracting elements in the design, in something intended to reduce distractions.
They're all saying "This has a lot of things, and we're going to noisily tell you about them."
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=fisher+price+busy+box&ia=imag...
What about instead an unobtrusive software-based timer on your computer?
And the notification to coworkers not to interrupt you being a low-tech "BUSY" Post-It on the back of your laptop. Or your headphones on?
Though their advertising does have some interesting features and use cases. For example, you'd need to figure out a convention equivalent to smacking the Busy Bar button, to make your colleagues slink away.
This looks like a very cool and very fun tool. Perfecting its use will be a much better way to avoid real work than scrolling instagram.
Neat. I have something I use that was $25 on Amazon. It's not as fancy and has a crappy app, but it works for what I want with displaying something to others while I stay focused.
The other features are interesting, but software features that may not warrant a hardware.
This also doesn't seem bigger than a phone and makes me wonder why not use a phone mount.
I have a home office and sometimes my wife will come busting in with the kids being silly. It's not a big deal but I would like some sort of indication for outside the room for when I am in a meeting.
This seems more designed for shared working spaces which seem limited these days
I was thinking of doing a kickstarter a while back for something similar. One surprising thing that kept me from proceeding (or at least, a thing I used as an excuse to not do the project) was that the guy who "owns" the pomodoro timer trademark is a total jerk about it.
I'll wait for the £30 knock offs, pretty cool though.
It's wild to me that this product went from 0 to where it's at, and no one stopped it along the way. This is going to hit like a handful of nerd enthusiasts, and that's it.
I used something simpler for 20€ for a while to indicate my busy status: https://www.getdigital.de/pages/offlineprodukt/usb-mail-meld... I guess it‘s no longer for sale. It even worked with Linux. I wrote some shell scripts back then to indicate my busy status from my jabber account using this gadget.
It feels as if the text on top of the device is upside down.. Should be directed at the user of the device, who sits behind the device (on the side of the small screen)
I bought a six-pack of sand timers. They are silent, require no apps, have no screens, and are beautiful. They will probably outlive solutions such as these.
If anyone is looking for something similar, but better priced, the Ulanzi TC001[1] with a custom firmware[2] is pretty nice. With the custom firmware, you can integrate it with Home Assistant and do all sorts of things with it.
For example, one idea my wife had was to have one on top of the washing machine displaying the last cycle of the machine based on the energy readings from a Zigbee smart socket, so we don't have to ask each other if the last cycle was a wash or drying cycle.
Will it change your life? No. But for $59 buckets it may add convenience here or there ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
[1]: https://www.ulanzi.com/products/ulanzi-pixel-smart-clock-288...
I'm amazed that nobody is pointing out that the entire thing doesn't look "designed" it looks AI generated.
Give me a clock timer that has these features.... Make me a website to sell this fake timer...
Particularly the instructive text on the back. A real designer would never have all that descriptive text always visible for things you'll only use once.
It’s nice that the phone app is free and works without the device. I’m curious about how “Hardcore Mode (optional)” could work, which the page describes as “Locks apps for the entire focus session with no way to bypass it. The only way to unlock them is a full phone reset.”
I could not find this in the app, maybe it’s Android only, an upcoming feature, or requires the Busy Bar hardware device.
I've been in a place where making that say "busy" when Visual Studio had the focus would be really useful... Except (cough) certain people in the culture would find it insulting.
It makes me wonder... How do you push on the "I can interrupt anyone at any time for any reason" attitude? I had a lot of trouble pushing on it in a previous workplace.
I saw this on twitter a few hours ago on my phone, and misread the price as $25, so I was considering maybe putting in an order or even two, but when I revisited the site on my laptop and discovered it was $250, my curiosity hit a wall. Looks like a super neat product but unfortunately a bit overpriced for a gimmick.
A similar thing is the ULANZI TC001 (50€ on Amazon), with the firmware AWTRIX 3 (https://blueforcer.github.io/awtrix3/).
Aren't all the labels on the buttons facing the wrong way? They're facing outwards in the direction of the screen viewer, rather than inwards towards the person operating the thing.
It can also be done with a bit of cardboard that says “Busy”.
That display looks like it could support some retro games that could keep you engaged for hours.
I will get one when such are available. :)
The looks is like cassette futurism aesthetic - https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Cassette_Futurism
It was recently trending on X so I've asked ChatGPT to make few designs for things like portable power station and EV charger and it worked pretty well.
A pretty cardboard printout and a timer on your phone/computer would be nearly as effective, no?
Cool industrial design, but might one of the dumbest product ideas I've ever seen at that price point.
Would it even be possible to make a $250 fidgety trinket without it being wasteful just about on every level?
Designer clock
and when I say "designer" I use the word like it's used in the term "designer clothing"
What happened to the good old timer. 250$ is steep for a timer.
Where can I sign up to get notified when the desktop app is available?
I just use a chess clock. Its perfect.
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it is a conversation starter more than a distraction stopper! plus $250? no thanks! a small display on your desk won't magically fix your environment!
$249! Too much for something that can be an app.
We used to have doors in the office for this.
What a beautifully designed toy.
$250 for something that is a week long arduino project... You can even 3D print the whole thing nowadays
I had a scrap industrial stack light set up in my office to indicate my busy/not-busy state. I never clicked it to red when someone was approaching, but in hindsight, it was still a bit obnoxious tbh.
Feel extremely passive aggressive. Or just plain aggressive. Especially the one of the woman coming over and the guy hitting the busy button. If someone did that to me that’d be the last time.
It’s $250! FFS!
Donate 245 to a charity. And make a dual sided sign out of reclaimed palet wood and that soldering iron you bought last year.
Oof that demo video that shows a coworker coming to ask a question and the guy just hits the busy button without turning his head is brutal.
The device itself looks pretty neat, and seems like it does have a lot more features than that douchebag-projecting use case.
For that price though, you might as well get an ipad...
If you can afford a $250 light up piece of plastic nonsense to taunt and gatekeep your coworkers with, chances are you can probably spend $20 on a time management book.
this seems like an actively hostile narcissistic addition to a collaborative workplace that would get you fired in a week.
i eork from home..alone no need to show
I’d buy it if it had a subscription. /s
Does it work without a subscription?
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That's pretty neat, although $250 feels like a lot for that at first glance. I get it has a lot of features but it's hard to get past the "it's a $250 busy indicator".
Not that I'd spend $250, but even something like that sold more as an open device to be used for a lot of different things changes (for the better) the value proposition in my mind a little than just sold as a busy sign with lots of integrations. Granted ... this appears to be that too. That's more a of a commentary on perception.