i3pamicstatus.py

aka "i3 PulseAudio Microphone Status"

What does it do?

i3pamicstatus.py is a simple i3status decorator that displays the PulseAudio microphone status.

It displays a green microphone icon if any microphones are listening, otherwise it displays a gray microphone-slash icon.

This requires that the consumer of your i3status (eg: i3bar) is using Font Awesome or a compatible font.

It determines that a microphone is listening by checking if any PulseAudio "source" is in the "running" state.

BlinkStick support

i3pamicstatus supports BlinkStick devices.

Note that in order to enable this support, you'll need to manually install the BlinkStick Python module. This module is not listed in requirements.txt, because it is optional.

If the blinkstick Python module is installed, then the first BlinkStick device found will be used, and will light up when a microphone is active. i3pamicstatus is tolerant of the BlinkStick device appearing or disappearing while it's running.

Why does this exist?

See this post that explains why I made this, and shows a small video of the BlinkStick support in action.

To Do

Right now, there's are no configuration options, but it'd be nice if you could configure a few things (options shown are proposals):
- status bar on/off text (--on-label & --off-label)
- status bar on/off color (--on-color & --off-color)
- BlinkStick on/off color (--on-led & --off-led)
- BlinkStick serial number (right now it uses the first BlinkStick found) (--led-serial)
- ability to disable blinkstick? (--disable-led)
A mode that doesn't require i3status input, but that instead polls on a specified interval might be useful, especially for users who just want the BlinkStick support. (--poll-seconds)

Usage

Use it as part of your i3status pipeline.

For example, if you're using i3, change the status_command in ./i3/config to something like:

bar {
    status_command i3status | some/path/i3pamicstatus.py
    ...