Lync BusyLight™ Review: USB Device Brings Physical Presence & Ringer to Lync

 

There have been various “hobbyist” electronics projects to do interesting things with presence lights and Microsoft Lync including:

• Tommy Clarke’s Lync Buddy: Click Here for Video
• Tom Kisners’ FEZ Panda Indicator: http://www.youtube.com/v/Q14wNlRHTAk?autoplay=1
• Tom’s project with another feature: Click here
• Lync Christmas Lights: Video Click Here
• Presence Status Indication System on Codplex: Writeup and Code click here

But I believe the BusyLight is the first commercially packaged product to provide physical presence light and ringer. Below is my video review of the device:

What are the Features of the BusyLight?

• Shows your Lync presence status by a color coded LED on top of a 4” tall wand
  • Green, Red, Orange and Yellow presence states.
  • (Ironic NOTE: Even the Lync Optimized phones only 3 colors! Green, Red, Yellow!)
• The unit has a built in ringer speaker
  • if you have a headset laying on desk, there is still a ring you can hear
  • or with a device with no speakers you still have a ringer
• Lighted Ringer (Blinks blue for ring)

What is in the box?

• The USB BusyLight
• Adhesive pad to stick the BusyLight to your laptop or monitor
• How to Install sheet

Some Pictures

The HP 4120 gives a little size comparison in the background.

The 2 small slots are for the ringer.

Mount can be angled to easily attach where you want.

ringer blue light (below)

How to Setup

• Plug the BusyLight into USB on your PC and the BLL driver should automatically load.

• Now you need to install and run the Windows tray app. Download it here: www.busylight.com/support/lync.

The tray app

Notes:

• The device is not a USB speaker device as I expected. (you do not configure this in Lync)
• The ring tones do not appear to be modifiable by user
• The tray app MUST be running for the BusyLight to work.
• the LED is nice and bright (the photos seem to appear more washed out than the actual LED)

You can buy the device:
http://www.busylight.com/index.php

Note: How is the Jabra busylight related to the Kuando BusyLight? (some striking similarities!)
http://scavali.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/jabra-brings-it-for-teleworkers-the-9450-with-busylight/