Almost all of us keep tabs on the weather, one way or another. The most invested among us would have an app or service they subscribe to that shows the forecast for today or maybe even the next few days. While the information is indeed useful, monitoring the weather sometimes also makes us more acutely aware that the forces of nature are beyond our control. On a gloomy day, it might even lead to a bout of sadness.
Since there’s not much we can do about the weather, other than preparing and mitigating, we might as well accept the fact and try to smile about it. It would definitely be easier if that weather news was delivered in a more human-friendly manner, like through some form of humor that only humans can understand. And who better to deliver that than this AI-powered “robot” with a penchant for making robot jokes about the weather?
Designer: Makestreme
Those who have been around the mobile app scene for a while now might be familiar with Carrot Weather, a service that is notorious for being sarcastic about the weather information it conveys. It’s still around, of course, but it’s only accessible on smartphones, so you can’t really enjoy that experience on your desk unless you reach for your device and potentially get distracted. Plus, you have very little creative freedom on how you want the news to be given to you.
Inspired by a blocky robot from the film Interstellar, this miniature TARS project tries to inject some form of humor into a device that can sit on your desk, bedside table, shelf, or anywhere you can plug its USB power cable. In addition to its unusual form, at least to anyone unfamiliar with the movie, this TARS tries to convey what the weather is like in a way that would probably make sense more to fellow robots.
Since there’s no service available that already does that, part of this DIY endeavor involves hooking up weather data from OpenWeatherMap into Google Gemini and crafting the perfect prompt to make it spit out its report in text not more than 60 characters. Why the limit? Because the screen being used for this tiny robot can only fit that much.
Another interesting aspect of this TARS weather reporter is that it uses the bare minimum to build the design. While it’s certainly more elegant to have it 3D printed, this particular iteration only uses poster paper with the patterns printed on it. The paper is cut and carefully folded to form the rectangular boxes that make up the robot’s body. Small magnets are glued inside to keep the parts together, offering very little stability but plenty of flexibility. It’s definitely a “poor man’s” DIY project that proves you don’t have to go overboard to produce a design that’s functional, interesting, and fun.
The post Witty AI weather reporter tries to bring a smile even on a cloudy day first appeared on Yanko Design.