Trap the Current Weather in a Box

In this Instructable, we’re going to build something that looks amazing on your desk, is incredibly easy to make, and gives new life to that old smartphone gathering dust in your drawer.

I had this ten-year-old smartphone lying in my drawer, collecting dust. I realized so many people have old smartphones like this that are outdated, can't run modern apps and websites, have half dead batteries and will simply end up in the pile of e-waste. With the rapid pace of smartphone upgrades these days, that pile of e-waste is only getting taller. So I decided to make a nice project that will make use of such old devices and give them a new life. This will not only add a touch of beauty to your desk, but also keep the earth green!

You can see raindrops falling inside the box when it’s raining, a fluffy cloud drifting by when it’s overcast, a radiant sun beaming when it’s sunny, ghostly haze swirling when it’s foggy, and dramatic lightning flashes during a thunderstorm, all in nice holographic form, floating in the box.

And it all updates live with your local forecast. The best part is that you don’t need a single microcontroller or a soldering iron, or any electronic components for this. This build is surprisingly simple, so grab your materials, and let’s get making!

An old smartphone

Plexiglass Purchase

PVC boards / mount boards for the box Purchase

Black paint

The core concept is simple: show live weather on your smartphone with animated icons. We’ll pull data from an API like OpenWeatherMap and build a lightweight app or website that displays the right visuals for the current conditions.

Next, we’ll construct a box with a piece of plexiglass set at a 45° angle and position the phone inside. The phone’s screen will reflect off the plexiglass, creating a convincing hologram effect!

First, let’s dig out that old smartphone that’s been collecting dust in a drawer for years. Mine is a Samsung Galaxy Trend from nearly 10 years ago.

It’s got cracks on the body, and even on the screen. Most apps don’t work any more, including the Google Play Store. So, building a dedicated app for our weather display is not an option. But that’s totally fine. As long as the phone powers up and can run a web browser, we’re good to go.

I jumped straight into building a website to display the weather information using some nice animated icons. I’ll explain in a moment why that turned out to be a bad idea. I found the icons online, links are in the description.

While I’m no web developer, with a bit of help from my brother, we got the site up and running and hosted it on OnRender, a platform that makes it easy to host websites directly from GitHub.

It all worked perfectly on my PC and newer smartphone. But on the old phone it just displayed a blank page. After hours of troubleshooting, we realized that the phone was so old that its browser couldn’t render React applications, which is what our website was built with. That’s when I also realized it couldn’t load most modern websites at all.

The only way forward was to strip things back to a plain HTML site. Even then, the phone just refused to load anything hosted online.

So I decided to serve it from my PC instead. I’m sure there’s a way to make a remote host work with that ancient browser, if you’ve got it working, I'd love to know in the comments. But I couldn’t figure it out. For now, I used a simple Python HTTP server on my PC.

When I opened the server’s IP address on the phone, it finally loaded, showing the animated weather icon and the current temperature.

You can find my HTML code here. Feel free to host it using any service you like or host it on your PC. It also includes the animated GIFs for the weather.

In case you're using my code directly, all you need to do is enter your open weather map API key, and replaces the Latitude and Longitude values from your location.

I grabbed some sheets of sunboard, also known as PVC board to make the box. This stuff is used for making signboards. You can find them at most hardware stores.

A PDF template is attached for reference while making the box. This is not to scale, since you'll have to adjust the dimensions based on your smartphone size. However, the overall shape remains the same.

1. Cut out your side walls and bottom panels, then apply a thin layer of rubber glue along the edges. Let it dry for about ten minutes before sticking the pieces together.
2. First, stick the side walls to the bottom piece.
3. Next, glue on the rectangular frame to conceal the phone beneath.
4. Finally, attach the rectangular top panel.

Once everything’s dry, you should have a box that looks like the image above.

Next, we’re painting the interior black. This cuts down on reflections and adds depth, making our hologram look more convincing and contrasty. I went with acrylic paint, but any good-quality black paint will work.

Then, grab a piece of clear plexiglass. It’s what our hologram will be projected onto. Cut the width to match the inside of your box, and the height to the diagonal distance from the base to the top edge.

Carefully slide the plexiglass into the box so it angles down toward the front. If it’s a snug fit like mine, you won’t even need glue to hold it in place.

Finally, slide the phone under the box. I kept it plugged in, since the battery is mostly damaged after all these years. And we're done!

And there you have it— a tiny box in which you've captured the weather! It looks amazing as you walk around, with the weather icon appearing to float in mid-air. Plus, we’ve given new life to an old smartphone that might otherwise have ended up as e-waste.

With the rapid pace of smartphone upgrades these days, projects like this are a fun way to keep old devices out of the landfill and turn them into something creative!