BusyLight for Humans™ gives you control of USB attached LED lights from a variety of vendors. Lights can be controlled via the command-line, using a HTTP API or imported directly into your own Python project.

Flag¹, Busylight Alpha², Status Indicator³, Blink(1)⁴, Mute⁵, Blynclight⁶. Orb⁷, BusyLight Omega⁸, BlinkStick Square⁹, Blynclight Mini¹⁰, MuteMe Original¹¹, fit-statUSB¹², MuteSync¹³, Blynclight Plus¹⁴

Features

• Control lights from the command-line.
• Control lights via a Web API.
• Import busylight into your own Python project.
• Supported on MacOS and Linux
• Windows support is untested but there are reports that it is working.
• Supports nine vendors & sixteen devices:

Vendor
Agile Innovative	BlinkStick Square
Compulab	fit-statUSB
Embrava	Blynclight	Blynclight Mini	Blynclight Plus
Kuando	Busylight Alpha	BusyLight Omega
Luxafor	Bluetooth	Flag	Mute	Orb
Plantronics	Status Indicator
MuteMe	MuteMe Original	Mute Mini
MuteSync	MuteSync
ThingM	Blink(1)

If you have a USB light that's not on this list open an issue with:

• the make and model device you want supported
• where I can get one
• any public hardware documentation you are aware of

Or even better, open a pull request!

Gratitude

Thank you to @todbot and the very nice people at ThingM who graciously and unexpectedly gifted me with two blink(1) mk3 lights!

Basic Install

Installs only the command-line busylight tool and associated modules.

$ python3 -m pip install busylight-for-humans 

Web API Install

Installs uvicorn and FastAPI in addition to busylight:

$ python3 -m pip install busylight-for-humans[webapi]

Development Install

I use the tool poetry to manage various aspects of this project, including:

• dependencies
• pytest configuration
• versioning
• optional dependencies
• virtual environment creation
• building packages
• publishing packages to PyPi

$ python3 -m pip install poetry 
$ cd path/to/busylight
$ poetry shell
<venv> $ poetry install -E webapi
<venv> $ which busylight
<venv> $ which busyserve

After installing into the virtual environment, the project is now available in editable mode. Changes made in the source will be reflected in the runtime behavior when running in the poetry initiated shell.

Linux Post-Install Activities

Linux controls access to USB devices via the udev subsystem. By default it denies non-root users access to devices it doesn't recognize. I've got you covered!

You'll need root access to configure the udev rules:

$ busylight udev-rules -o 99-busylights.rules
$ sudo cp 99-busylights.rules /etc/udev/rules.d
$ sudo udevadm control -R
$ # unplug/plug your light
$ busylight on

Command-Line Examples

$ busylight on               # light turns on green
$ busylight on red           # now it's shining a friendly red
$ busylight on 0xff0000      # still red
$ busylight on #00ff00       # now it's blue!
$ busylight blink            # it's slowly blinking on and off with a red color
$ busylight blink green fast # blinking faster green and off
$ busylight --all on         # turn all lights on green
$ busylight --all off        # turn all lights off

HTTP API Examples

First start the busylight API server using the busyserv command line interface:

$ busyserve -D
INFO:     Started server process [40064]
INFO:     Waiting for application startup.
INFO:     Application startup complete.
INFO:     Uvicorn running on http://0.0.0.0:8000 (Press CTRL+C to quit)
...

The API is fully documented and available via these URLs:

• https://localhost:8000/redoc
• https://localhost:8000/docs

Now you can use the web API endpoints which return JSON payloads:

  $ curl -s http://localhost:8000/lights/status | jq
  ...
  
  $ curl -s http://localhost:8000/light/0/status | jq
  ...
  
  $ curl -s http://localhost:8000/light/0/on | jq
  {
    "light_id": 0,
    "action": "on",
    "color": "green",
    "rgb": [0, 128, 0]
  }
  
  $ curl -s http://localhost:8000/light/0/off | jq
  {
    "light_id": 0,
    "action": "off"
  }
  
  $ curl -s http://localhost:8000/light/0/on?color=purple | jq
  {
    "light_id": 0,
    "action": "on",
    "color": "purple",
    "rgb": [128, 0, 128]
  }
  
  $ curl -s http://localhost:8000/lights/on | jq
  {
    "light_id": "all",
    "action": "on",
    "color": "green",
    "rgb", [0, 128, 0]
  }
  
  $ curl -s http://localhost:8000/lights/off | jq
  {
    "light_id": "all",
    "action": "off"
  }
  
  $ curl -s http://localhost:8000/lights/rainbow | jq
  {
    "light_id": "all",
    "action": "effect",
    "name": "rainbow"
  }

Authentication

The API can be secured with a simple username and password through HTTP Basic Authentication. To require authentication for all API requests, set the BUSYLIGHT_API_USER and BUSYLIGHT_API_PASS environmental variables before running busyserve.

⚠️ SECURITY WARNING: HTTP Basic Auth sends usernames and passwords in cleartext (i.e., unencrypted). Use of SSL is highly recommended!

Code Examples

Adding light support to your own python applications is easy!

Simple Case: Turn On a Single Light

In this example, we pick an Embrava Blynclight to activate with the color white. Colors are specified as a three-tuple of integers that range from 0 to 255 and represent red, green, and blue in that order.

from busylight.lights.embrava import Blynclight

light = Blynclight.first_light()

light.on((255, 255, 255))

light.off()

Not sure what light you've got? No problem!

from busylight.lights import Light

light = Light.first_light()

light.on((0xff, 0, 0xff))

light.off()

Slightly More Complicated

The busylight package includes a manager class that's great for working with multiple lights or lights that require a little more direct intervention like the Kuando Busylight family.

from busylight.manager import LightManager
from busylight.effects import Effects

manager = LightManager()
for light in manager.lights:
   print(light.name)
   
rainbow = Effects.for_name("spectrum")(duty_cycle=0.05)

manager.apply_effect(rainbow)
...
manager.off()