Hack the “light” Button for Quick Slack Alerts
Using headphones usually means you don’t want to be disturbed, but sometimes it means you are just listening to something while you work. If you want to be accessible even though your banks remain, why not create your own alert button?
The developer Nick Sipteras appeared , who wanted to solve the problem with colleagues requiring his attention while he had headphones. Working in a booth, he wrote: “A visitor to my desk cannot get my attention except by waving his hand in front of my face, making loud noises behind me, etc.” So he got out a soldering iron, a Staples Easy Button, and an Adafruit microcontroller.
Sypteras wrote the code to send its Slack alerts to MicroPython , a version of the programming language designed for microcontroller boards. The Adafruit Feather HUZZAH microcontroller monitors the value change depending on whether the button is pressed or not.
Using the Slack API , he was able to post to a private channel that he created specifically for the easy button on his desktop. While the message simply informs him that he has a visitor, you can experiment with it and use the Slack API to attach additional information to your alerts.