Nearness is a system for providing glanceable, slightly fuzzy information about people’s whereabouts. The giant ‘a’ shows if I’m on my way home and the 3D printed mini-me lets my colleagues know if I’m in the office, watching over them, or not.

So far it’s small scale and a bit obscure, something to scratch my own itch, really. An iPhone app reports your approximate location to the backend which in turn is polled by your physical avatars. These avatars can then report if you’re nearby or not and are typically built using Arduino, Electric Imp or Particle boards.

App and backend developed by Jonatan Lövgren, help from others along the way.