I love the idea of gauges. A gauge is a simple elegant analogue description of a parameter: The speed of your car; The temperature outside, the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow. It would be pretty cool to have a gauge that can show whatever value you feel like pushing out to it via wifi.
The project will use an esp8266 and arduino promini to drive a stepper and some LED segment displays (because I have all of those parts laying about!) to create a physical gauge that can be configured remotely to display...well, anything you want it to.
I have finally started doing something with this. I have hooked up the servo to the mini, and right now, I am interfacing directly via serial. It is probably the worlds simplest demo at this point. Take a number in via serial and map it to the servo range.
To keep things interesting I printed of a gauge face and mounted it in the face of an old cd case.
As much as I laughed when I first saw this, this actually would be a rather cool thing to have. Just saying, "Time to pull out my WiFi gauge to check how well it is" would be something unique indeed.
Why not make it go to 11?!