These Boots Are Made for Blinking #WearableWednesday

Matt Crans was inspired by the Broadway musical Kinky Boots and decided to create some sultry LED versions of his own. One boot offers a disc-like decoration with an LED that changes on foot-strike, while the other boot uses a row of LEDs that illuminate when stroked. On the disc side he’s using a Lilypad Arduino Simple Board with a piezo as a sensor to create changes in the RGB LED. On the strip side he has a row of LEDs in parallel with breaks in the negative line at each LED, so sliding a finger allows the circuit to be completed briefly for each. That’s what I call a no fuss solution for interactivity. I think this also may be the first wearable project I’ve blogged about inspired by a musical rather than a sci-fi movie. I’m liking it! If anyone else is a boot fan out there, you may want to consider the fun ways you can use sensors to trigger LEDs. In fact, our Firewalker Lite Sneakers Guide shows how to use our tiny GEMMA microcontroller and a vibration sensor to trigger animations on NeoPixels. It’s a fun way to add some flash to that next line dance meetup. Great job, Matt, and as Cyndi Lauper would say, “the heel is the transmission.”


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