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Spaces & devices

Do not disturb lights for treatment and therapy rooms

Room status light automation switches a LIFX light outside the door when a session starts and back when it ends. It follows the room’s Google Calendar bookings and, where useful, Zoom calls, so colleagues know not to knock.

An example of how the studio would build it. No live services are connected.

From a session starting to a quiet corridor.

  1. Step 01

    Session starts

    A booking in the room’s Google Calendar reaches its start time, or a Zoom meeting starts for that room’s practitioner.

  2. Step 02

    Light changes

    Set the LIFX light outside the door to the agreed ‘in session’ colour.

  3. Step 03

    Session runs

    Keep the light on until the booking ends or the Zoom meeting finishes, whichever is later.

  4. Step 04

    Room clears

    Return the light to its ‘available’ colour, or switch it off outside opening hours.

  5. Step 05

    Override respected

    If someone changes the light by hand or in the LIFX app, leave it as they set it until the next session.

The result

No more knocks in the middle of a session.

The light only shows that the room is busy, never who is inside or what the session is about. If the calendar can’t be reached, the light stays as it was rather than flicking between states.

Before we connect it.

Where this is useful

Useful for clinics, therapy practices, salons with treatment rooms and podcast or recording studios, where an interruption is awkward or spoils a take. A sensible first version covers one or two rooms from their calendars, then adds Zoom for practitioners who also see clients online.

What we need to connect

  1. 01A LIFX light for each room, connected to Wi-Fi and to a LIFX account the workflow can control.
  2. 02Read access to each room’s Google Calendar, and Zoom access for the users whose meetings should count, where you want that.
  3. 03The colours for each state, any rooms that should switch off out of hours and who can override them.

What needs careful handling

Sessions overrun or finish early, so the light follows the calendar by default and a manual change always wins until the next booking. Booking titles and client names can be sensitive, so the workflow reads only start and end times and never shows details on the door. If the Wi-Fi or a cloud service drops, the light stays in its last state, so a simple sign on the door is worth keeping as a fallback.

Questions people ask.

Why not just use a sign on the door?

A sign works well until someone forgets to turn it. The light changes by itself from the booking, and the sign can stay as the fallback.

Can it work with our booking system instead of Google Calendar?

Often, yes. Many booking tools for clinics and salons sync appointments to a calendar or offer an API, and the light can follow either.

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