The lights are much brighter than they appear in this picture; had to intentionally darken the image to prevent camera from blowing out the colors. Stack/signal lights are everywhere in industrial applications for good reason: they’re a compact and relatively information-dense indicator system. They always seemed like the kind of indicator that only people with expensive machines needed. Until I found that they can be had for just under $6/light from Ali Express, that is.

This is “reference” post for anybody else that happens to have this same very specific problem. I was looking for a way to incorporate some of the many cheap / industrial grade sensors from AliExpress with Home Assistant. Long story short: almost everything electronic in the industrial space uses Modbus to communicate, typically with a PLC. While Home Assistant does have support for the Modbus protocol, but wanted to use a PLC that could manage the sensors directly and expose the values over the network in a more standard format; MQTT.