Software engineer Skytee made a steampunk-style bandwidth meter. He (she?) calls it the TorrentMeter:
I got a 1908 voltmeter in a brass housing, about 20cm (8in) in diameter. It had a resistor made from a wire wick. The gauge's internal resistance without that is now about 67 ohms, eats up 150mA when the handle is at full scale, and wants about 10V. That's too much to be driven directly by a micro controller. A switching amplifier, made from a couple parts, shall help.
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