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Sixerdoodle Electronics - Sonar Recording Light
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Description
Sonar users, how many times have you had people walk into your studio in the middle of a recording session? Do you just want some kind of simple Recording in Progress light right outside the door? I sure did! Searching the web, turned up empty. So what does a good engineer and maker do? Make one! Worked great for me, so thought I'd make some for other folks too.
RecLight uses Sonar's Control Surface interface to access Sonar's transport control. This means when you press Sonar's record
button, the Red recording light automatically comes on.  When Sonar stops recording, the light automatically goes off. Press Sonar's play button, the Green playback light automatically switches on.  Stop Sonar and it's all lights off. The provided light units are LED based so they're low power and low heat.Watch it in action here This Sonar recording in progress light also supports 2 light units. One for outside the control room and a second for inside the recording room. Each LED Light Box is a 5.63"L x 3.25"W x 1.51"H black plastic box and has one red and one green multi-LED light.
The RecLight Controller comes in a 4.38"L x 3.25"W x 1.51"H black plastic box that connects to your DAW's parallel port and can drive up to 2 LED Light Boxes. 
Update Oct-2008 If there is any interest in this, let me know and we'll look at building a production unit.
Here's the prototype 
RecLight Software is available for download below. You can install the software by itself and construct your own recording light hardware or buy hardware from me. There are many parallel port resources on the web if you want to build your own, however I can't take any responsibility for appropriateness of other designs or other hardware. Just remember, I take no responsibility for other designs or hardware connected to my equipment. So, if you're not up for rolling your own, order one of my parallel port interfaces and one or two LED light boxes. Go over to the order page and order what you need. If there's interest, I can put together a board only and/or a kit if you'd prefer. e-mail me here: and we'll see what we can set up. If you want to build your own controller, the RecLight software toggles Lpt bit 0 for the Play light and bit 1 for the Record light. High is light off, low is light on. It's a pretty straight forward interface! After installing the RecLight software, launch Sonar and under Options menu, select "Control Surfaces..." In the Control Surfaces dialog, click the "Add New Control Surface" button. Select RecLight in the Control Surface dropdown. The Input Port and Output Port can be set to --None--. Then click OK and Close the Control Surfaces dialog. At this point the Control Surface toolbar should show "RecLight" and "IO.DLL OK". If you do not see the Control Surface toolbar, use Sonar's View / Toolbars... menu to enable the "Control Surfaces" toolbar. Back in the Control Surface toolbar, make sure that RecLight is the selected Control Surface and click the properties button. In the LPT port section, select the port address for the parallel port on your PC. Normally this configured in your BIOS and typically is 0x378. Click the Test buttons to see if the Record and Playback lights change. (Or watch D0/D1 on the parallel port if you're building your own controller) If nothing happens, try another port number... Beyond that, each PC and BIOS is different, you're on your on at this point.
Notes
Then go over to the Order page and select the hardware components you need, such as the RecLight Controller and one or two RecLight LED modules. Talk about it here
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