[Vasilis] works at CERN, as well as like any type of big organization that developed the world large Web, they take computer safety quite seriously. One ‘feature’ the IT personnel implemented is locking the desktop whenever the screen saver runs. When [Vasilis] is in his office however not at his battlestation, the screen saver invariably runs, locking the desktop, as well as greatly frustrating [Vasilis].

The normal Hackaday option to this issue would be a complex plan of RFID tags, webcams, as well as hundreds, if not countless lines of code. [Vasilis] came up with a much much better solution: have the computer ping his phone over Bluetooth. If the phone is detected by the computer, kill the screen saver.

The code is up on Github. It’s not much – just 20 lines of a Bash script – however it’s just sufficient to stop the aggravation of typing in a password lots of times a day.