Mastodawn

I need a few—probably 3—of an "office busy light" product like this https://amzn.to/4b1vvUZ for a home office setup. But:

1. They all cost like $50 which seems like *way* too much for an LED on a stick
2. That cost seems to mostly pay for software that directly integrates with Microsoft Teams. I have no need for integration with Microsoft Teams and in fact kind of anti-want that.
3. I want to write my own automations and it's not clear if they have an API

Is there a cheap/DIY version of this?

Amazon.com

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alpha Feb 21

@glyph Depends on how much faff you're willing to put up with to not pay as much. Probably worth taking a look at the WLED and ESPHome projects for the software side, but I don't know if there are any solutions that don't require some amount of DIY electronics/enclosure work.

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Glyph Feb 21

@alpha I mean I want good, cheap, and fast, but there's a fairly low ceiling on faff that I'm willing to put up with in this case. "don't bother at all" remains a workable BATNA

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alpha

@glyph My guess is that the simplest solution would be to buy a non-smart one and wire up an esp board inside of it (unless there's a kit that I just don't know about - entirely probable), and while I imagine it wouldn't be the most complicated project to take on, does still have a minimum level of faff involved.