On Air

It's here! I've added support to control Philips Hue bulbs via a Hue bridge. Everyone I've spoken to uses a Hue bridge, and it's really the best way to interact with Hue bulbs, so I spent the extra money to buy a Hue bridge so I could build against it.

If you use Philips Hue bulbs, please give the latest release a try, I think you'll find it really enjoyable! https://getonair.app/

I'm currently building support for Philips Hue bulbs. I've got a working prototype with a Hue bulb + a Hue bridge.

I think after I can ship this, I'd like to try building support for "groups" or "scenes". Up until now, I've only built in support for controlling a device, which is essentially just a single bulb. But it would be nice to control an entire group of bulbs that someone might already have configured.

I've just pushed out an update to the app that enables you to choose "Do Not Disturb" as a trigger. Now, you have the ability to turn on a WiFi bulb when "Do Not Disturb" is activated.

Note: You'll need macOS 11 or greater (Big Sur) to use this feature.

Get it here: https://getonair.app

On my second sale, I got bug report. This felt especially frustrating because I should have covered "sad path" cases more.

Here's the positives, though:

• Someone made a purchase
• They cared enough to reach out and ask for help
• My bug reporting software logged the error so I could have a clue on how to reproduce it
• I was able to improve the application

I got my first sale today! It's from someone that I don't recognize, either, which makes me really excited!

One thing I learned is that I don't really know where they came from - I wish I had some better analytics to know what source they came from. Perhaps that can come later.

Today, I published the app onto Product Hunt. It hasn't gotten much traction yet, but fingers crossed...

I grew tired & weary of deliberating. I kept thinking about worst case scenarios, which features I "had to have" to launch, how to market & promote, worrying about if I had major bugs, etc etc...

Two days ago I remembered this phrase: "If you aren't embarrassed by the first version of your product, you shipped too late". I'm not sure who said it, but it really lit a fire under me. I needed to get this thing out and let go of the anxiety that I was holding on to. I took a deep breath, posted to Product Hunt, and now I'm just waiting.

I successfully scratched my own itch. Surely other people would use this?

I started investigating how to build a Mac menubar app. I'm primarily a front end developer, so I immediately reached for Electron + React to start hacking this thing out. Along the way, I sent a feedback survey out to my LinkedIn network & got about 50 responses. This was helpful to validate my idea and prove to me that at least a few people would be interested.

I wrote most of the functionality of the first version of the app within 2 months, off and on.

First, I bought a WiFi light bulb ($10). Then, I found some open source software that let me control the bulb & detect when my camera was active. I wrote a tiny command line utility that checked for the camera status every few seconds & told the light bulb to turn on or off based on the camera status.

It worked!

After working from home for about 6 months, I wanted a way to let my two young children know that I was in a meeting, and I couldn't be interrupted. We tried hanging signs on the door, but that didn't work. Then, I thought about a "do not disturb"/"on air" light. What if I could turn on a light when I was in a meeting?

I work on the second floor of my house, and the rest of my family spends most of their time downstairs. I didn't want to have to walk downstairs to turn on and off a light, so I started investigating how to control a light from my computer - specifically, when my camera was on.