This Rotary Slack Status Updater Is a Must-Have for Remote Workers

With more of us working from home these days, online collaboration tools like Slack have become even more important. One feature of Slack is that if you need to dip out for a bit for whatever reason, you can set your status to “away.” Unfortunately, this only works if you actually set it. So if you go out to walk the dog while your computer says otherwise, you may be inundated with unanswered, and perhaps even urgent, messages.

To help combat this potential work-at-home hazard, Becky Stern, in collaboration with fellow hardware hacker Brian Lough, came up with a custom ESP8266 Slack status interface. Stern’s device includes a 3D-printed enclosure which houses the ESP board, along with a six-position rotary switch on top.

This setup allows her to choose different icons for status, such as a sandwich for lunch, a dog for taking her pooch out, a crystal ball for… predicting the future(?), and more. This also switches between Slack seeing her presence as automatic or away, a subtle, but potentially important distinction.

You can watch more of the build process and a demo in the first video below, and more specifics are available via Stern's project tutorial. Addditionally, Lough goes over his Slack API library in the second clip, and if you’d like to check out the code, it’s up on GitHub.