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  • poleguy looking for lost toolspoleguy@mastodon.social
    Nov 21, 2025, 5:58 PM

    When you close the terminal running the script, or it crashes, or you kill it with ctrl-c, systemd is supposed to restart it. This requires some magic to allow systemd to run the program as your user, and allow it to interact with the desktop.

    Finally xfce4-terminal normally runs in the background, so you have to add a special flag to make it block so that systemd doesn't run infinite copies of it in a loop.

    2/n

    #electronics

    xfce4 desktop showing teams being scraped by a script. mastodon is seen with a picture of the light that the script controls.
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  • poleguy looking for lost toolspoleguy@mastodon.social
    Nov 21, 2025, 6:01 PM

    3/n

    For years I had stopped investing in this type of personal automation on my computer, because it seemed like I was fighting the OS at every step of the way. Running #windows, it seemed that it was trying to prevent you from interacting with hardware, prevent you from scraping/automating/composing/integrating applications that you didn't write yourself. It even felt that you were discouraged from writing apps at all yourself.

    Now that I'm on #linux it feels worthwhile again.

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  • poleguy looking for lost toolspoleguy@mastodon.social
    Nov 21, 2025, 6:06 PM

    4/n

    Now it feels like I'm not at risk of being prevented at the next update because they remove a capability of the system, or change it to make "me" "more secure."

    I do worry about #wayland breaking all this a bit. But who knows.

    It's great seeing my machine interacting with stuff (teams status) from the internet, and causing a relay to click on a light in the physical world.

    It could be extended to detonate fireworks! Maybe that's why #bigtech seems set on keeping everything sandboxed.

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  • Beko Pharmbekopharm@indieweb.social
    Nov 21, 2025, 6:14 PM

    @poleguy I like the idea but the way it's implemented let's me run in terror but you'll probably also run when you see my wiring so there's that.

    So.. as a general idea you could also just ask your current pulse or pipewire session if something is recording from any mic source. Anything browser related usually shows up as WebRTC stream here.

    Probably a lot easier than running a chrome debug session with string compares on running tasks.

    Pretty sure Windows has a similar API.

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  • poleguy looking for lost toolspoleguy@mastodon.social
    Nov 21, 2025, 6:22 PM

    @bekopharm

    I presume when you say "the way it's implemented" you mean the architectural decisions, not issues of code style?

    Is it that you run in terror from screen #scraping?

    If this were just an "on air" light, then yeah, that might go well. For my friend, he is probably doing something like that.

    For me, the lantern is not indicating "on air" it is indicating "in a teams call"

    I work at a #proaudio company, so "mic on" is not specific enough.

    And, my goal is to skill-up...

    1/n

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  • Beko Pharmbekopharm@indieweb.social
    Nov 21, 2025, 6:28 PM

    @poleguy I just read the script `teams_chrome_status.py` which looks for a teams tab. Not the whole thing. Won't comment on the code style, not my project.

    > I work at a #proaudio company, so "mic on"

    Huh? I don't say "mic on". I say opened streams. There is no audio stream on the system when no application is accessing the mic. This isn't about the existence of the mic itself or if it's muted or whatever.

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  • poleguy looking for lost toolspoleguy@mastodon.social
    Nov 21, 2025, 6:34 PM

    @bekopharm

    You said "if something is recording from any mic source"

    I summarized that as "mic on"

    But let's not talk about the trouble caused by the 500 character limit of #mastodon. :-)

    I do understand your distinction between streams, mic existence, and mic mute status.

    I'd love to hear you describe your emotional state when you first saw my "look for teams tab" code. I think that is a valuable discussion to have if you're so inclined to share.

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  • Beko Pharmbekopharm@indieweb.social
    Nov 21, 2025, 6:40 PM

    @poleguy 500 characters are not my problem. It's the effin Engrish I speak ._.

    Eh, I'm not emotional attached to code but we have a saying that I thought of while reading this: "Von Hinten durch die Brust ins Auge" / "from behind, through the chest, into the eye" (as in shot).

    It doesn't translate well but it's a typical comment for an overcomplicated solution here.

    Alas it's not stupid if it works, right? :)

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  • poleguy looking for lost toolspoleguy@mastodon.social
    Nov 21, 2025, 6:48 PM

    @bekopharm
    I love the feel of that phrase... thanks for sharing! I gather from this phrase that you're in Germany or thereabouts?

    I'd say the 500 character limit was a problem here. I substituted phrases that I would not have done had I been speaking or writing freely. This can lead to a lack of precision.

    I have a German last name, but can't speak/read it.

    I working on a go-kart racing team with a tag-line "doing it the hard way... on purpose." :-)

    phantompowerracing.com/

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  • poleguy looking for lost toolspoleguy@mastodon.social
    Nov 21, 2025, 6:51 PM

    @bekopharm

    Here's a question: if you (personally) did want the lantern to light based specifically on the status of a particular web based application like teams, and not via an indirect measure like "Web RTC stream active," how would you have done this?

    I'm _very_ interested in hearing the details of why this hit you so hard... through the chest and into the eye. :-)

    My code may be more "performance art" than "practical."

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  • Beko Pharmbekopharm@indieweb.social
    Nov 21, 2025, 7:01 PM

    @poleguy I've lantern light at home [as you already found out while I was replying 😆]. It does know a few states more. It's using a batshit crazy mix of Sockets, UDP, Websockets, MQTT, JS, CPP and even Rust. At it's core I've node-red flows going. It's useful to unify my datastreams so the hardware doesn't even know what game/app is currently sending data keeping this part stupid af while the flows can be adjusted quickly e.g. when I want to add a new source or have to change stuff after updates

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  • Beko Pharmbekopharm@indieweb.social
    Nov 21, 2025, 6:52 PM

    @poleguy yes I'm from Germany.

    > doing it the hard way... on purpose.

    That could be my mantra as well. Working / Gaming on Linux only for decades 🤪

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  • Beko Pharmbekopharm@indieweb.social
    Nov 21, 2025, 7:05 PM

    @poleguy I am. The Mega is a beast but I'm still out of pins and have to add a button matrix to it now too. Great board IMHO, would use it again, yes.

    Now I did.

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