I work from home. My wife does too. Her office has a door. She closes when she needs to concentrate. A closed door means “do not disturb”. But my office does not have a door. And sometimes I need to concentrate too!

We solved this with a Blynclight. It’s a small light connected via USB that can change colors. I put it near the entrance to my office — clearly visible as my wife approaches. If the light is “red”, that means “do not disturb”. That’s my simulated door. It’s worked very well so far.

Blynclight comes with software that integrates with Skype/Lync and various other applications. But there’s also a SDK that contains a DLL that communicates directly with the light (without any other software being installed). I used that to write a system tray app that lets me adjust the light:

I was hoping to package up the app and put it on the Galden Studios web site (for free). But I ran into a problem: the SDK EULA doesn’t allow distribution of the DLL in a 3rd-party product. So that makes things a bit more difficult (unless I ask the user to do a bunch of manual steps). I’ve thought of a few possible solutions, but I haven’t had time to try them yet…