[f3b5]

While this is a pretty cool hardware project, I would be quite annoyed to be your partner. No offense, but it almost reads as satire that you want to flash LEDs in every corner of the house if your wife doesn't look at her phone notifications quickly enough.

[sgarland]

They said a status board on top of their monitor, not every corner of their house. This seems like a very unobtrusive signal to me. Plus, some people like to hide or obscure their phone from their field of view during work, to minimize distractions. Honestly, the only person I immediately check my phone for is my wife. If I could have a priority indicator along with that, I’d love it. There are some things I need to know immediately (a kid is sick and one of us needs to pick them up, etc.) regardless of what I’m doing, and there are others where it can wait until I’m done with a meeting.

[Dylan16807]

> They said a status board on top of their monitor, not every corner of their house.

No, that was someone else.

[sgarland]

Ah, you’re correct.

[thedanbob]

I thought it went without saying that she's on board with it, and that "need to get a hold of her" meant e.g. "I'm trying to call her but she's out in the shop". 99% of our communication during the day is asynchronous.

[Dylan16807]

Can you explain why it's worse than normal landline phones that you can hear in the entire house?

[bombcar]

Why back in MY day we just had 5-7 kids stationed throughout the house. A simple “Joey, go tell Mom” was all you needed!

/s

[c22]

I remember the year my dad installed an intercom system in the house and then disabled it within a month or two due to its use by children.

[IAmBroom]

No offense, but your privilege is offensively visible.

Deaf people need this.

[stndef]

Yup! I have significant hearing loss to the point that I'm useless without hearing aids.

I'm going to take this idea for my partner to use to get my attention if needed. Having it tie into Home Assistant is a win for me as well.

[cogogo]

I don’t have hearing loss but the best way I’ve found to not miss important notifications is a smart watch. Game changing to ensure my wife and I don’t miss each other’s messages around school pickup or anything else important. With an apple watch you can make the vibration pretty unmissable. We both have almost all other notifications silenced so it’s not overly noisy either. I never use sound for any kind of notification anymore - even when expecting important calls.