On Air: Part one

My home office has a wide open arch entry way right off the main hallway between the living room and kitchen, and is also the route from kitchen to the upstairs master bathroom which all the people in my house prefer to use for their showers.  My family understands that when they see me with a headset on that I may very likely be on a zoom/webex/teams/pick-your-favorite-teleconfering-app call.  I have two cameras in my office that I might use for these calls, one with a face view, and one with a side view (the laptop camera) due to where my laptop sits.  The side view points to the arch, and I rarely use it, sadly, if the front facing camera gets disconnected, that one is always available and becomes the default camera.

Imagine not being able to, in your own home, wander from your bedroom to the bathroom wrapped in a towel, and having to worry about being on camera in the background.  Not ideal.  I've put a sticky over that camera for now to address this challenge.  But since I'm on calls so much, I often wear my headset most of the day (it also helps notify me of incoming requests for attention).  And so, to avoid the inevitable question "Are you on a call", I thought it might be a good idea to get myself a wirelessly controlled, battery operated on-air light, and then have it be controlled by detecting use of a headset with my computer.

Yeah, this is NOT a commercially available solution, but all the pieces are out there.  You can get an On Air light, a 5V DC operated WiFi switch, and a battery pack to create what I call "On Air: Part one".  The parts below (or similar) are what you need.

Take the back cover off the light, and cut the red wire going from the battery case to the on-off switch.  Route two wires so that they can get out the back (I simply cut a hole in the back of the light), and connect to the newly cut power feed.  Connect the wire from the battery case itself to the center (common) position of the relay using the new wire (routed through the back), and connect the second wire to the on-off switch to the bottom terminal of the relay.  Insulate the newly made connections (I used heat shrink tubing, but electrical or other tape will work).  Connect the new battery pack to the WiFi switch. Install batteries in both battery packs.

Download the App that works with the switch you purchased and follow the directions to connect the relay to the app.  You MAY need to reconfigure your router to separate your 2.4Ghz network from your 5 Ghz network to make everything work (I did).  Test the switch in the manufacturer's selected App.

Tell Google Home about the new switch you installed.  

OK, at this point, you've now got a remote controlled On Air lamp.  In part two, I will show you how to control that from your PC, and in Part three, I'll explain how you can detect use of a headset on your laptop.  I have three different headsets I can use, and one works with both my phone and my laptop, and the other with my iPad and my laptop, and the third with any device I plug in into.  The software solution I put together should work on when any of these devices is used for communication.  I'll leave it to you to guess how I make that work (when I get there).