I have owned four Wi-Fi routers in my life. Without exception, they have all been blocky, joyless objects that brought nothing but pain and frustration into my life (and, y’know, wireless internet). If the access points had been hidden inside the USS Enterprise, however, things would have been oh so different.
Sadly, you can’t buy an Enterprise router off the shelf, but you can hack one together surprisingly easily. Christoph Kauch and Rol Schwarz appear to have done just that, putting a Ubiquiti Unifi router inside a Revell 1:600 model of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701.
Because it’s a fairly simple enterprise-level access point, integrating the AP into the Enterprise casing doesn’t look too hard: there’s just one Ethernet port that needed wiring into the stand, and the actual board for the router fits pretty snugly into the bridge of the Enterprise. Even so, the attention to detail — light-up command bridge, anyone? — is impressive.
The modding duo posted a series of images of the process, plus a good making-of video to YouTube. Given that the designer of the original NC-1701 admitted to taking design inspiration from household items (specifically, the heating element of his stove), I think it’s fitting that the Enterprise is back in mundane household items. [YouTube via Reddit]
Picture: unbehandelt/Imgur