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The TV on Your Shirt
Adafruit Industries announces a new wearable technology platform.
DAVID ZAX 01/27/2012
Wearable electronics gets a new boost, with a new platform from Adafruit Industries, the brainchild of DIY-goddess Limor Fried (hacker handle: Ladyada). The new platform, dubbed the Flora, points to a future where people are wearing TV screens--or at least, something vaguely like them--on their T-shirts.
“For the last few years Ladyada has been thinking about everything she wanted in a wearable electronics platform for Adafruit's community of makers, hackers, crafters, artists, designers and engineers,” writes Adafruit in its announcement of the new platform. “After months of planning, designing and working with partners around the world for the best materials and accessories, we can share what we're up to.”
The Flora board is quite small, less than 2” in diameter (the thing has to be wearable, after all), and has built-in USB support (“this means you plug it in to program it, it just shows up,” says the site). CNET says the new platform is designed so that anyone can “craft a matrix of hundreds or someday, more than 1,000 small LED ‘pixels.’” Currently the Flora, which is being beta tested, can support no more than 500 linked pixels. Of course, 500 pixels isn’t an immense number--you might want to stick to your television to watch a movie--but it’s a start.
What’s next? Adafruit promises “dozens of projects that will be released” with the Flora this year, including related apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android.
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http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/helloworld/27535/?p1=blogs