“WINDOW TO THE WORLD” BRINGS FAR-OFF places TO YOUR home

For those who love travelling around the world, life hasn’t been terrific for the past two years. World-wide lockdowns and travel restrictions have kept lots of people stuck inside their own homes when they would rather be jetting off to distant cities. If you’re one of those bothered by Wanderlust, [Alex Shakespeare] might have a option for you: a window that shows a live image from another location around the world.

The Window, showing a live feed from Tokyo.
To make the experience as lifelike as possible, [Alex] used an actual window in his London home and mounted a large TV behind it. A wall-mounted map enables him to choose any of five locations by moving a little magnetic plane across the map. LEDs show the available spots, while magnetometers discover the motion of the aircraft. An ESP8266 then instructs a media server to connect to the proper livestream, which is subsequently displayed on the TV screen.

All of this is creative enough already, but [Alex] made a decision to go one step additionally and added a thermal sensor that detects the location of any persons standing near the display and shifts the image a little when they move. This simulates the perspective of looking out a real window, and must give the image a a lot more life-like quality than if it were simply static.

The whole design is available on [Alex]’s GitHub page, ready to be replicated by any individual who wants to look out over some exotic location. If, instead, you want a way to reminisce about the places you’ve checked out in the past, check out this amazing souvenir globe. We’ve also seen a neat Google Maps based one a few years back.

Thanks to [Itay] for the tip.