Box Conjures Weather, Right in Your Living Room
First, we reported that you can direct sunlight within your home; now we’ve discovered you can bring in the rain. And the fog. And even the lightning.
The Tempescope tells you what the weather will be by producing it in your living room. Luckily it’s contained within a small glass box.
The makers pitch it as a box that “makes today’s weather outlook ‘glanceable.’”
Here’s how it works: The device syncs to an app on your phone that details the local weather forecast. Then the box reproduces the predicted weather.
Its tagline is “a box of rain in your living room,” which is both pretty apropos…
…and perhaps sells the thing a little short. It also produces foggy clouds…
…and purple-lit lightning when storms are on their way:
When it’s sunny, a blue light shines into the empty box.
(GIFs: Tempescope)
Forecasting wasn’t really what the Tempescope was invented for, though. Creator Ken Kawamoto dreamed up the box after visiting the Marianas, a super-small island chain west of the Philippines, and wanted to take the tropical island skies home with him.
He initially used the box to show him what the weather was like there, and has included that as a feature as well. So the next time you want to know what the weather’s like in your hometown or that tropical paradise your friend won’t stop posting selfies from, you can simply select the sky over that place and the Tempescope will produce it.
You can also program the box to show you weather that is more reflective of your mood than of the actual day, “because everyone loves reading on a rainy day,” according to the Tempescope’s video.
Kawamoto is currently a few days (and a couple hundred thousand dollars) into an Indiegogo campaign, where you can receive kits to build the box yourself for $199.
But if you think kits just make things too easy, you can actually build one yourself with Kawamoto’s step-by-step instructions on his open source project page (though be warned, apparently this method isn’t any cheaper).
