Making an On Air Light with Philips Hue and Automation

Because I podcast and do live video from my home office while my wife, Melanie, is homeschooling our five kids in the other room, it’s important that I let others know when it’s safe to knock on my office door and when they have to be very quiet. In the past I looked into those fancy “on-air” lights that you see in TV and radio studios, but they’re pricy and usually need to be hard-wired and so instead I’ve tried various workarounds like notes taped to the door and even a battery operated light that I screwed into the door itself. They never worked well and I eventually stopped using them.

Finally, I think I’ve got the solution, creating a virtual on-air light using a Philips Hue bulb; a cheap plug-in wall light; and some automation on my Mac.
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Using Hue motion sensor temperature with Geektool and Keyboard Maestro

One part of our smart home setup is our Philips Hue lighting system. Over the years I’ve replaced many of our old light bulbs with Hue smart bulbs in various fixtures, which allows us not only to control the lights with automation and schedules, but also with our voices using Alexa and Siri. We can also group control of them through compatible switches without having to rewire what’s in the walls.

Philips also makes a motion sensor, which is great for rooms that don’t get a lot of traffic during the day, meaning that the lights go off when no one’s using them or where people often forget to turn them off. I have one of these sensors in my office and another in the pantry/laundry room. What’s nice is that these sensors also have thermometers in them, which means I can track the temperature in the rooms. Unfortunately, to find out out what the temp is, you have to open either the Home app or the Hue app to find out. Unless you do a little home programming.

I wanted to have the current ambient temperature of both rooms to be constantly updated and displayed on my desktop and, also, to get notifications if the temperature gets too cold in the winter or too hot in the summer and I might want to turn on the heater or the air conditioner to adjust the temperature.1

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