Imagine a scenario, if you will. You are late to get to work and rushing to get ready. In your haste you completely missed the weather forecast on the news and don’t have time to wait for them to do it again in a half hour. You could look it up on your phone, but you should have left ten minutes ago and now everything you do is just more time you are going to have to blame on traffic when your boss asks why you are late.

Now, imagine if in this instance all you had to do was look at a little plastic box sitting on your table and instantly know if you should bring a rain coat or not for later. Impossible you say?

Well, that little bit of science fiction can be real sooner than you think, thanks to Ken Kawamoto. He has invented The Tempescope. The Tempescope is a small plastic box that, when connected to the internet, will download info from weather forecasts that it will then display to you by recreating the weather outside. With light and water effects, it is capable of depicting everything from a sunny day to fog to rain. Kawamoto originally released The Tempescope as an open-source project that could be built by anyone who wanted one. If you are more interested in just purchasing a commercial version will be happy to hear that a Kickstarter campaign is in the works.

Would you pick up a Tempescope, or be willing to back a Kickstarter for them? Let us know in the comments below.