Navigational Coffee Table Helps Direct Your Journey
Michael Rechtin, a creative maker, has transformed his living room with a unique coffee table that serves as both a piece of furniture and a practical tool for daily traffic monitoring. This innovative design seamlessly integrates woodworking craftsmanship with modern technology, creating a standout piece that adds both functionality and aesthetics to any living space.
### Design Elements
The table itself is constructed with mitered joints at the corners and coated in polyurethane, providing a sturdy base for the advanced features. Bolting onto a set of legs, the table boasts a stable foundation that supports its unique elements.
The centrepiece of the table is a CNC-cut map of Cincinnati, placed under a sheet of glass. Roads and rivers are intricately painted for added visual appeal. Above this detailed representation of the city's topography, an LED light show brings the map to life, displaying real-time traffic conditions or various pre-programmed animations.
### Functionality
The table's smart functionality is powered by a Raspberry Pi, which collects live traffic data from APIs like TomTom and updates the LED light show every minute to ensure the information is current. Green LEDs indicate clear roads, while red signifies congested areas, providing users with a quick and easy-to-understand snapshot of the city's traffic conditions.
The LED system offers multiple display modes, including animated highway displays, customizable RGB lighting patterns, and five pre-programmed animation sequences. This versatility allows the table to adapt to different settings and occasions, making it a versatile addition to any living room.
### Key Components
At the heart of the table is the Raspberry Pi, which powers the entire system, handling data collection and LED management. The LED system creates the visual effects, enhancing the map with real-time data and animations, while the CNC-cut map provides a detailed representation of Cincinnati's roadways and geography.
This innovative coffee table project demonstrates the integration of hacking fun into everyday life, combining functionality, aesthetics, and technology to create a practical and visually appealing traffic map that is sure to be a conversation starter in any living room.
The Raspberry Pi, a small yet powerful gadget, powers the smart functionality of the unique coffee table, collecting live traffic data and managing the LED system that displays real-time traffic conditions. This coffee table, with its integration of smart-home-devices like the Raspberry Pi, showcases how hacking can be used to enhance everyday items, transforming them into innovative, interactive pieces of furniture, such as this traffic map for smart-home-devices.
