The tempescope originally started with a prototype created by Ken in 2012, as a weekend project. The motivation was to "always have the sunshine (and occasional tropical thunderstorms) of the Okinawa isles in the living room".
This first prototype was made from $1 shampoo bottles.
The prototype received a lot of attention, and in 2013, Ken created an Open Source version (OpenTempescope) that was designed to be reproducible by anyone with access to simple tools.
After the OpenTempescope had a couple of successful public viewings and awards, the team that exists today self-formed around this version to develop a commercial version of tempescope. One unsuccessful crowdfunding campaign later, we're still in talks with distributors to start selling this product.