Bandwidth may have increased dramatically over the past couple of decades, but internet connections are often still quite unreliable. For people with unreliable connections, it becomes a chore to check a browser over and over again to find out when the internet is back up. To avoid that hassle, Emily Velasco built this monitor.

This device has only one purpose: to indicate when its internet connection is functioning or not. All it does is ping Google.com and checks if it gets a response. If it does, the device lights up in green to show everyone in the vicinity that the internet is working. If it doesn’t, it lights up in red.

Velasco has a very distinct design aesthetic, which is readily apparent here. The unit’s indicator LEDs reside in a small animal skull’s eye sockets for some “oddities and curiosities” style. That skull sits under a dome of glass, which is a repurposed security camera housing. Velasco has many animal skulls around her home, so this device blends right in.

Inside that base there is an Arduino Nano 33 IoT board, though any WiFi-enabled model should work for this purpose. The sketch is very simple, as it only needs to ping Google.com and then control the two LEDs.

While the macabre appearance may not appeal to everyone, the functionality is something that many people will appreciate.