Nat-2 Sneakers Blingin’ the LEDs #WearableWednesday
Nat-2 has done some pretty impressive sneaker designs including sci-fi inspired After Earth and Transformer models, as well as a Wu-Tang brand. Their latest endeavor is translucent soled sneakers sporting LED strips for 20 different color/blink patterns. We are talking disco jogging, dance anywhere, gym crazy kind of fun. Their new designs will soon be up for grabs at Coilex, their edgy warehouse shoe store.
This Munich design group leaves nothing to chance–every detail is considered down to the laces. Their designs range from playful to progressive, with a love of tech. Considering they’ve been in the shoe business since 1856, it’s kind of like watching Back to the Future. Their work reminds me of Trafo Pop’s awesome bicycle jackets in Berlin, and if the two groups ever get together, they are going to blind people on the street with their illuminated wearables.
It’s nice to know you can buy blinky sneakers, but if you are a maker, you are probably going to want to hack your own pair. So, check out our Firewalker LED Sneaker tutorial. You can use our FLORA microcontrollers and NeoPixel strips to get your sneakers chasing lights around your feet. Send us a video or gif when you are done, because you know we love happy feet dances.
Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.