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A DIY enthusiast has built a fully functioning steampunk-styled ‘TorrentMeter’ gauge for Internet bandwidth.
Skytee, who describes himself as someone who makes “things do stuff they weren’t intended to”, posted details on his blog about the construction of the 8-inch TorrentMeter. The steampunk-themed version is actually the second such meter but Skytee was inspired to revisit the project after seeing a project for an antique gauge displaying air quality data from the web.
“Since we’ve got fiber optical intertubes at home, I wanted a big brass gauge telling me how big my pipe was. And that’s the idea of my TorrentMeter.”
Using a popular DIY micro controller, the Arduino and software to fetch bandwidth information from a Linux-based router, some electronics were also needed to drive a vintage 1908 brass voltmeter.
Naturally Skyee also had to replace the original gauge markings with new markings showing Mbps instead, a scale that goes all the way to 100.
There’s also a video on Skytee’s web site.
