The RainDrop

drawing

The RainDrop sits beautifully and unobtrusively in your space, giving you a calm insight into the next 60 minutes of rain. Much like an analog clock, a simple glance gives you all the information you need, and helps you focus on more important things, spending less time pulling out your phone or computer.

The RainDrop was inspired by bicycle commuting through Boston. On cloudy days, I found myself checking the weather on my phone every 5 minutes or so. How can I time my 20 minute ride to navigate between the downpours? Anytime I find myself incessantly using my phone, I search for a better solution. Thus came The RainDrop.

Currently there are 10 units around the greater Boston area.

In Action

If you’re curious, you can find the firmware on github. It involves a simple firmware that sits on the RainDrops themselves that controls the lights and the wifi set up. Additionally, there is a set of Cloud Functions hosted on Microsoft Azure that handle the heavy lifting; pinging the weather forcast service (DarkSky), and determining the location of a newly setup RainDrop.