Separate of the product itself...I have to compliment whoever designed the landing page! I'm not a UX/UI/page design expert, but here is what i experience:

* the page loads quick - without overlays, distractions, etc. the page gets to the point, and fast

* immediately i see a description of what the product is...this might sound funny, but tons of product sites lack this most basic thing!

* In addition, the very brief video at the top shows a human hand operating the product...so i know even more about its functions, or at least how to interact with product

* a call-to-action of "BUY" is present and impossible to miss, positioned right after/below the product intro/description

* as i scroll down, the experience is NOT janky...its a smooth scroll down the page

* scrolling down informs me more about the product, including its features, different angles of the physical product (to help denote the features), they even squeeze in that there are developer options - so i'm tipped off that its not only a consumer device, but that it can be integrated with other systems, expanded by devs, etc.!

* they include more product photos in order to show how the product may appear and/or be used in real life

* they even include photo and description of certain features - which serve almost as a very brief user guide, but again, i'm sure the intent is to show off the product's feature set

There probably are other great things about this page that i have not noted here...But, again, kudos to the person/team who designed this! I see many teams that are really intelligent, and might have great products/service, but they don;'t include half the elements present here. Because while i don't have interest in this product, damn, this an extremely compelling experience for their product! Cheers and kudos to all involved!!!!!!!

Is there any message from the Flipper Zero people that this is actually their device?

It’s not mentioned on https://www.flipperdevices.com/, neither on https://flipperzero.one/ or their Instagram?

They have been plagued with peopling scamming people in their name before

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 thing. I did also knock up a Pomodoro app for it.

0: https://www.ulanzi.com/products/ulanzi-pixel-smart-clock-288...

1: https://github.com/Blueforcer/awtrix3

This reminds me of my first job in London looking after the network of a recruitment agency. The consultants got headsets for the first time and one got so annoyed about being interrupted when on a call - because you couldn't tell when people were wearing headsets the whole time - that she taped a big bit of card to the top of her headset saying "ON A CALL" that she could flip up and down depending on whether she was speaking to someone.

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 buttons, a LCD display, a AAA battery slot, and an internal timing circuit is all that's needed (and a case to hold it together).

This would basically be a stop watch that stops on its own if neglected, and I can imagine a few uses for it.

Looks slick - the backside of the device does look a little "busy" and distracting if I had to stare at it on the top of my monitor.

Nice!

For a home-rolled solution, I use a GE CYNC ST19 Edison Style bulb in a socket right outside my office door. I have it configured through Home Assistant (https://www.home-assistant.io/), and then use Hammerspoon (https://www.hammerspoon.org/) on my macbook to make an API call to Home Assistant when the camera state changes.

If my camera turns on/off, so does the light bulb. Works really well for letting my family know I'm busy in meetings.

Nice product, I built a similar (but less flexible) system for an "ON AIR" sign that I have in my home office, as both my wife and I WFH, it is nice to have a visual indicator when one of us joins a call.

Software for Linux and Mac is here [0]. There's also an ESP32 for the sign, but that part is trivial (MQTT -> LED)

[0]: https://github.com/davidventura/on-air

I suffer from ADHD and the pomodoro timer part interests me. However, I am not sure if a pomodoro timer would help me. And $200 is an expensive gamble.

It’s very pretty; but it’s also a little sad - that there could be demand for a big red flashing IRL “busy” indicator.

If I’m busy and if it happens so often that I can reliably buy a device like this, I would instead prefer to adjust my work environment to not be distracting, and to inform people that they should contact me at some other time.

I guess this may not always be an option.

A bit dystopian turning people into a taxi-like system where you need an indicator to tell if they are vacant or not.

Regardless, I'm struggling to know the audience here. Is it an employee in the office? If that’s the case, it won’t solve any problem because most of the disturbances happen from your boss either calling about something or asking you to join another useless meeting. Your boss won’t care about your status simply because they won’t be collocated in the same office as you most of the time (not that they care about your online status anyway). For colleagues, after the first month or so, everyone will pretty much find the best way to approach others. If you still need a device for that, then there’s a problem in communication that you need a persistent device all the time. At home, you won’t need such a thing. So I don’t know who will find it useful; it looks gimmicky. What’s next, a hat that will turn a green light telling people you are approachable or in the chatting mode, and red when you are not?!

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!

The mode where it sits on a monitor and displays a status ("on call") is very interesting. I think that could be simplified into a product unto itself -- but it would need to priced at "office toy" level -- so around $20-$40 USD.

Messing with this thing sure seems like a great way to stay focused.

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.

> Use of the terms “Pomodoro®” must be explicitly authorized by us. [1]

1: https://www.pomodorotechnique.com/pomodoro-trademark-guideli...

The display is a resolution of 72x16, or 1152 px. I counted; there's a couple of frames as the first "busy" mention displays that the splashing animation lights the entire panel.

For comparison, the Ulanzi TC001 mentioned throughout this thread is 32x8, for 256 pixels.

I think if one was wanting to build something like this for themselves that just using a 7" ips display intended for rpi would work as well. With 1024x600 resolution you could draw the chunky pixels if you wanted that aesthetic, and those can be had for like $28.

Why are the buttons are printed to be readable from the large sign side of the device and not the management side?

This design has very strong "2020's TV series based in the Star Wars universe" aesthetic vibes... or is it just me?

Super well done website, and the product itself looks very thoroughly polished.

Waiting room for someone playing doom on it.

OMG, I love this. The one missing feature: a high quality camera. As soon as I saw the screen mount, I immediately thought of Continuity Camera, which is a great solution for people who want decent video without a full streamer rig.

It looks very neat, and I love all the physical controls, but it seems like kind of a device from another time where everyone worked in-person all the time. I work a hybrid schedule, with a mostly distributed team, and hotdesk/hotel when I'm in the office, so I don't have the luxury of a physical device to indicate my status, nor much use for one.

That said, I really want something designed like this that I can use.

They need to make a miniature version that I can attach to my headphones because that is my busy indicator.

If I'm at work and need to focus, noise cancelling headphones are a must. If they're off then I'm not busy.

People be so busy they need to buy a hacker-friendly device and build bespoke integrations with it.

I quite like the large format for a timer. I have some much lower tech alternative that works wonders for helping keep me focused on tasks: https://www.timetimer.com/

I wouldn't have thought this kind of thing would be useful, but after trying a few pomodoro timers I ended up with one (TimeTimer Plus) that is so large that it had the unanticipated benefit of notifying others how long I'll be busy.

However, I will say it depends a great deal on your coworkers/family as to whether they care that you're busy when they want to ask you something.

Oh my, this is something I've been wanting to create. Something simple like an illuminated on-air sign outside my office door. This is awesome, and awesomely over-engineered.

This would take my $200 and just be another distraction of me trying to get $200 worth of value out of it.

I have a “Back in…” analog clock sign on my door. It was a dollar.

In the monitor screenshot it occured to me that you need to choose back or front. But in most open offices you will probably need a 360 dispaly. A circle design that scrolls might work.

Also pomedero breaks are also busy. Having a break is something. Being interupted during that break is no better than being interuppted during the work part.

Back when I worked in an office and had to do deep thinking without interruptions, I'd string up a bit of yellow police-like tape that I stole from the SGI offices that were closed during Shoreline concerts that said "SILICON GRAPHICS". Worked perfectly.

Hmm shouldn't the button labels be reversed if you're supposed to face it away from you?

Rad device! Not here to gripe about the actual price - and I realize it's counter-intuitive since we say "one hundred dollars" out loud - but in the US, the dollar sign goes before the amount: $189 not 189$

Does this really beat a printed BUSY clipart taped to my screen? It's far from the first product I see like this and the question is always the same.

This looks retro-sleek. Really cool design.

Does this work without cloud-connection? Does it work with the Flipper Zero? Considering it's from the same company, I would think there is some synergy available. And it seems to lack a speaker. For some reason, I would love to play radio on it, not sure why..

EDIT Ok, found the speaker. Nice.

I can't seem to tell: is this run off a battery? If so, any specs on the battery? Or is it powered via cable?

This is incredibly similar to a personal project I've been prototyping. I love that Flipper brought it to market and will buy one. A fully open source & open hardware timer like this would be awesome. Cheaper DIY kit with 3d printable case. Does anyone know if one exists?

Lots of features mentioned there, I wonder how many of those will be ready on launch day and what will be delivered later.

Really nice design!

Would love to have one but.. can’t find a use-case for it

Interesting toy, but in my world none of my friends are going to pay $189 for that. Even when the the dollar sign is on the wrong side.

I'm a bit dumbfounded by the price tag of $189. Am I wrong?

Out of interest is there anything similar to the Ulanzi TC001 but with a slightly higher resolution.

Looks like lametric alternative?

Clicking on this page tries to XSS to a domain hosted in Russia (looks like an object storage backend) which is blocked by NoScript.

i thought someone had finally productized a clock i built for myself a long time ago, which, instead of showing you the time of day, counts down to your next meeting

https://github.com/jareklupinski/count-down

google and apple dont make it easy...

Don't make me tap the sign.

This is cool, I've thought of building something like this for years now.

The price is a bit high, but glad to see it in the real world.

I love this idea.

If it was $100 instead of $189, I would order two (one for me, one for partner) as soon as they were available.

With all the controls and lights to fiddle with, this Busy Bar hanging off a techbro monitor... is kinda like the Busy Box that was hanging off their crib.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1760749770/fisher-price-busy-bo...

Since 2014 I dream about a product very very similar to this! Happy to see it built!!

"hey what's that flashing box on your monitor?"

"that's my pomodoro timer, it's from a Russian company that specializes in devices that enable various forms of cybercrime. you may have heard of the widespread wave of fraud circa 2019"

"oh neat, no I haven't heard of that"

"hey what's the wifi password again?"

So this is a cloud connected LED sign that tells people to ~~fuck off~~ leave me alone. For 189 USD. This is the most Hacker News thing I've seen in 2024.

Cool but not $189 cool.

Finally I can put my colleague on Verbal Probation.

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

I hit the 'BUY' button while thinking 'how much is this worth, or would people be willing to pay' and settled on about $60-80.

I'm obviously a cheapskate.

Sure, some people will buy it even it was $2000, but I think most people will be put off by the ~$200 price.

take my money

Finally, the productivity technique named after a $1 clockwork timer gets the fiddly software-and-cloud-based solution it deserves.

too expensive to justify the purchase, otherwise cool and seems to be rather good build quality (at least from videos).

Good but expensive, also does not solve for people behind or side of you.

Why is everyone complaining on the price tag? It is a product that someone made for profit just like everyone else here is trying to do.

Did Hacker News turn into Daily Deals?

All these sad people working in offices that need to defend their focus. I will never do that again.

Very Les Nessman-ish.

Whenever I see someone with a busy light in the office, I view it as an over-the-top, attention-grabbing, awkward human interaction and an explicit invitation to bother him or her.

It's "don't make me tap the sign" in electronic form.