I programmed a tool for you.
It's called PC Presence and does exactly what you want. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to implement notifications yet, but on/off view already works.
From the README:
What it does
This is a small tool that allows you to make an easy network where any PC can see whether the others are online / offline.
Instructions
- Download the installer onto each of your PCs (depending on your system architecture, it is the PC-Presence_Setup_x[something].exe file in this repository).
- Install PC Presence.
- When you open the app, it wants you to enter a "server URL".
- From here you can follow below steps.
This option is more secure and better, but also a little bit more complicated.
- Download or clone this repository.
- Visit the Pythonanywhere site and register a free account.
- Log in.
- Just ignore all the stuff shown to you and go to the "Web" tab.
- Click on "Add new web app".
- Choose "Flask" and "Python 3.4". Leave everything else as it is.
- Go on the "Files" tab.
- Navigate to the directory "mysite".
- Find the button "New file" and click on it.
- Upload the file (from this repository) "flask_server/mysite/flask_app.py".
- Yes, you want to overwrite the existing file.
- Upload the file (from this repository) "flask_server/mysite/registration.html".
- Go back to the "Web" tab.
- Click on "Reload [your username].pythonanywhere.com".
- Visit https:// [your username].pythonanywhere.com/register.
- Enter a team name and a team password (team name can only contain letters, for security purposes).
- :tada: Your team is registered! In the app, enter your server URL (which is [your username].pythonanywhere.com, without any http or https stuff and without slashes), your team name and your user name which is specific to you.
- You get a list of all people in your team. Green means online, red means offline.
Optional: Disable other team registrations on your server
If you want to disable other team registrations on your server (so no other people can register their team on your server), go to the "Files" tab again and open mysite/flask_app.py.
Now you'll find a line in the editor that says registrationEnabled = True
. Change it to registrationEnabled = False
.
On the upper right corner, click on "Save" and on the reload button (with the two arrows).
Security
Sorry, there is not much. You can't double-register teams. PC Presence will allow double logins from the same user and will not verify anything.
Refresh rate
PC Presenter refreshes online/offline every minute. When the program is closed, your status changes to offline after 2 minutes.
Autostart
Whenever you turn your PC back on, you'll have to start PC Presence to make you visible in the team. You can also put PC Presence into the Autostart folder.
Plans for the future
- Notifications
- Auto-Updating
- Autostart

PC Presence is MIT-licensed, so you can use it for commercial purposes as well.
If you have issues, contact me and I'll help you.