Imagine devices sitting on a desk or objects in the living room of a home that were connected to the web, displaying information that people want to continuously keep an eye on. The Email Gauge is a live, physical display of the percentage of a user-defined term in their email inbox. Imagine coming home from work and instantly seeing how much 'Love' you have in your personal inbox. Or imagine being able to keep an eye on how many business-related emails ('@yourdomain.com') you have while reading a book on the sofa.

A functional prototype was created using an Arduino, stepper motor, and a Ruby script running on the connected laptop. The device continuously and silently gives a physical readout of a searchable term in your email box.