Tag Archives: internet router

This Wi-Fi Router Looks Like an Incense Burner and Scents Your Room

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Most home routers live behind books or plants, blinking away in corners, only noticed when the connection drops. There’s so much quiet faith placed in that invisible box every time we ask it for directions, answers, or late-night comfort while scrolling. If we already treat Wi-Fi like a kind of everyday oracle, maybe the hardware could look and behave more like an object we actually care about instead of just tolerating it.

innrou is a Wi-Fi router concept that resembles an incense burner and incorporates fragrance. It’s designed to go beyond spec sheets and become a small storytelling object, imagining the future form of electronic products. The name and form hint at traditional incense rituals, but the function is pure 21st century, keeping your devices online while quietly scenting the room with swappable essential-oil sticks.

Designer: Yuan Chen

The designer’s starting point is a neat cultural parallel. In traditional Chinese society, people would ask gods for guidance and answers, often by lighting incense at a burner. Today, many of us scroll the internet for the same things, from practical fixes to something closer to spiritual reassurance. innrou deliberately combines those two behaviors, using a router as the carrier for a story about how we now seek help.

The essential oil system reinterprets incense as modern fragrance sticks. You replace a spent stick by sliding in a new one, the same simple vertical gesture used at a temple. That motion deepens the narrative and adds a bit of playfulness, turning maintenance into a small ritual instead of an annoying chore, while the router quietly keeps doing its job underneath without asking for attention.

innrou is a small, rounded block that can sit openly on a desk, bedside table, or shelf without screaming “network gear.” The antennas are hidden, the front shows only a few status dots and a subtle logo, and the body comes in soft colors that match interiors. Instead of being something you hide, it becomes part of the atmosphere, both visually and through scent, which is a surprisingly big shift for a product category that usually defaults to black plastic.

Under the incense metaphor, this is still a proper router. There’s a row of Ethernet ports at the back, a power connection, and internal antennas doing the heavy lifting. The essential oil sticks are designed as replaceable cartridges with their own packaging, so the ecosystem feels thought through. It isn’t about chasing the highest throughput number but about making the necessary hardware less of an eyesore and maybe a bit nicer to live with.

A concept like innrou suggests that if a router can borrow the form and gestures of an incense burner, other invisible boxes could also become objects we actually want in the room, not just tolerate. Blending connectivity with scent and story reframes a forgettable device as a small daily ritual, which feels oddly appropriate when you already treat it like a modern oracle that knows where everything is and when everyone is awake.

The post This Wi-Fi Router Looks Like an Incense Burner and Scents Your Room first appeared on Yanko Design.

Blocky Wi-Fi router concept is inspired by smokestacks factory

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Usually, we don’t really think of where to place WiFi routers since they just look like ordinary devices. It doesn’t matter where they are placed as long as it does what it’s supposed to do. They’re also not that well-designed anyway so it’s better to hide them away. But what if the router’s design is actually well thought out and can actually be part of your decoration?

Designer: In Je Lee

This is the idea for the Wi-Fi router concept called Complex ‘1’ which has found inspiration in the most unlikely places: a factory smokestack. The designer says that just like the chimney diffuses the smoke, the antenna of this router spreads the Wi-Fi signal throughout your space. There is really no direct correlation between the two of course except that he got the cylindrical shape inspiration from the smokestacks.

Instead of the usual slim antennas that you see on routers, this one actually looks like a lego piece, with the square body and the two cylindrical and asymmetrical antennas. It also comes in a bright, yellow color so if you display it on your desk or shelf, you can get a spot of color in your space. It also has a clock on it so you can use it for another purpose. There’s a small, orange button at the back for resetting or toggling the clock on and off.

This is an interesting take on the common router, which is usually hidden under or behind stuff because it’s not that aesthetic. This way, since you’ll display it in the open, there’s no interference with the signal reception. Well, hopefully there will also be other colors since not everyone is fond of this kind of yellow.

The post Blocky Wi-Fi router concept is inspired by smokestacks factory first appeared on Yanko Design.

Artistic router concept opens like a folding fan based on the Wi-Fi strength

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Being stuck at home for months on end has been an eye-opening experience for many people. For some, it revealed how little space we have at home, while others realized how they are ill-equipped to work at home. At the same time, many people have also become more aware of how the tools they use, especially consumer electronics, have aesthetic value that could either uplift their mood or burden their subconscious minds because of their designs. Wi-Fi routers, in particular, come in uninspiring or sometimes menacing designs that we often hide in corners or behind other objects that can actually negatively affect their performance. This router concept design tries to address that and other pain points with a design that turns a boring box into something like an art object that unfurls its beauty like a peacock when the Wi-Fi signal is strong.

Designer: Sunjin Na

Common home routers are simple boxes with one or two antenna rods sticking out from them. More powerful and sophisticated equipment, however, would have multiple antennas that transform the router into something like a robotic sci-fi creature. Unless you actually go for that kind of aesthetic, chances are you’ll be hiding the router from view. But if you’re not careful, that could actually affect the signal that it transmits. Additionally, you wouldn’t have any way of knowing whether the router itself is receiving a good Internet signal without looking at your phone’s Wi-Fi bar or some other app.

Blooming Out is a design concept that fixes those problems by making sure you wouldn’t want to hide the router in the first place. It gives the router a makeover that isn’t just aesthetically pleasing but also functional. It uses the concept of a folding fan that “blooms out” when the Wi-Fi signal is strong but retracts and folds in when it is weak. It’s not a binary state, though as the 29 fans can indicate the signal strength in between.

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The router also has visible antennas, but not in the design you’d normally expect. The three antennas stand together a bit off-center and can be rotated to maximize the spread of the signal. Because of this design, Blooming Out looks more like a peacock fanning out its tail in pride when it’s working in full force.

With this design, the Blooming out router concept becomes more than just a tool. It becomes an aesthetic object that adds visual value to any space, disguising its actual function without compromising its functionality. Of course, there could still be some technical drawbacks with this unconventional design, but it could be something that’s easily resolved with today’s technologies.

The post Artistic router concept opens like a folding fan based on the Wi-Fi strength first appeared on Yanko Design.