The station is a fairly basic proposition, consisting of a Base receiver (screen/computer,) that communicates with little sensors out in your garden or on your verandah, giving you readings on such things as temperature, humidity, wind speed, sunlight, rainfall, air pressure and whatever else you can imagine. They can give you forecasts, save your extreme conditions and other cool stuff. Being a weather freak and storm lover, I think these things are fantastic. That being said their cost is usually ridiculous, and I've never actually had one myself.
That seems to be a fairly simple one... And it costs about as much as an Xbox 360. The thought came to me today, since the Revolution and DS are going to be, and are wirelessly capable, wouldn't they make a perfect base for a weather station?
I take it the cost of such a weather station decreases dramatically when you don't have to custom make an LCD base receiver. Instead, you would put a disc in your Revolution or a cartridge in your DS, and away they go! Data could be viewed on your TV or DS screen, the DS's touchscreen being even better! Nintendo could design the whole software around fun graphics and make it really cool and interactive.
Furthermore, data could be saved on Revolution's flash memory for you to tally up yearly rainfall and what not. Obviously there'd be some technical issues with the fact your Nintendo Wi-Fi weather station wouldn't be monitoring things 24/7, but these things can be worked around.
Overall I thought it'd be a pretty interesting idea for a non-game type application that draws in an adult oriented market.
Thoughts?
Title: RE:The Nintendo Wi-Fi Weather Station
Post by: IceCold on November 06, 2005, 09:17:09 AM
It's definitely an idea. However, like the browser on the DS, I don't think Nintendo would have anything to do with it, or even encourage it, and it would be up to a 3rd party. Nintendo wants gaming to be the primary (and perhaps sole) function of the DS, like all their other systems. But then there's the Play-Yan, so you never know..
But the more important question is whether it will sell. Sure, they may be some people out there who would buy it, but I'm not sure it would sell enough to warrant it being developed.
Title: RE: The Nintendo Wi-Fi Weather Station
Post by: Stimutacs Addict on November 07, 2005, 07:50:25 AM
put it on the virtual console; let us download it and save it to the DS's RAM or a blank GBA cart
