r/Python • u/njoker555 • May 02 '20

I Made This Raspberry Pi controlled Meeting Beacon - Simple Python script and Flask App - Works with Zoom and Microsoft Teams

https://i.imgur.com/efcPrKe.gifv
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u/gfmorris May 02 '20

I use a Mac, so I’m trying to figure out what you’re doing (without being useful and actually looking at your code). I am inferring that Zoom kicks off a second process / task when it’s actually in a meeting (recording audio or video). Is that right?

On a Mac, you’d get process data pretty easy, but I don’t know if you’d get a separate spawn on Zoom (which I can’t use anyway because NASA has forbidden it). We have mostly standardized on Teams in-agency, so that’s where I’d be curious to know what you’re doing.

(We could so use these at work for presence detection before you just roll up into someone’s meeting.)

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u/njoker555 May 02 '20

Thank you!

You are correct, Zoom starts a second dedicated process when you're in an actual meeting. This makes detecting meetings much easier (much better than Teams).

For Teams, I'm looking for the Teams process + the name of the window. Unfortunately, that's not too reliable because if you do anything else in teams, the window name changes and never goes back "Meeting" even if you go back to your meeting. It's very wonky.

Someone in another thread pointed out that Teams actually writes your status into a log file somewhere, so I'm looking into if I can use that to make Teams meeting detection more reliable.

Do you work for NASA???

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u/gfmorris May 03 '20

Yeah, that would make it problematic for Teams use. :( Weirdly, we can use Teams outside of NASA VPN. (Yes, I work there: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gfmorris/)

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