Our latest assignment in Scrapyard was to repurpose some sort of “dead technology” to incorporate something new or more modern. I had an extra wifi router in my closet that I knew I wanted to do something with so I started there.
I’ve always been annoyed at how ugly and messy routers can get: power and coaxial cables from the wall, Ethernet between modem and router, and all the antennae etc…
To solve this, and incorporate the scope of the assignment, I decided to make a weather barometer that instead of reading air pressure, reads the traffic on a wireless network. After searching around I discovered quickly that, although barometers have been replaced by weather media, they are still valued quite highly as decorative antiques. Far out of my price range.
So I made a basic design in Illustrator and had it laser cut to house my project. Here’s what it is so far, the actual guts and function come next:
