Caitlinsdad has been making awesome wearables for quite some time. Usually they involve lights or some sci-fi humor, however, this time he’s got a serious wearable hack—Personal Safety Alarm Sneakers. He has put together a short and sweet Instructable for how to create this defense system and even includes a warning in the beginning “don’t sleep on the subway.” I hope this isn’t the reason this got created! Anyway, I know he responded to my tweet, so apparently he is fine and hopefully wearing these kicks on the street.

This has got to be one of the easiest projects ever, starting with a dollar store window alarm which relies on a magnetic switch. You attach the switch with its adhesive and two cable ties onto a piece of fabric. Then, you add the alarm module using a piece of velcro. The action of kicking off the alarm piece will trip the annoying buzzer and hopefully confuse the troublemaker as it drops to the ground.

Something that I like about caitlinsdad’s tutorials is that he makes suggestions on possible improvements to his projects. In this case he does say that you have to experiment with the amount of velcro that works well for your kicking ability. He also imagines a clip on variety that may work on shoes that don’t lace. So, try experimenting yourself with this inexpensive hack and see what you create. I know it isn’t easy to come up with a compact waterproof solution using common Arduinos, speakers and batteries. To be honest, it is finding a speaker or buzzer that is loud enough that is tricky. So, it makes sense that caitlinsdad used an off-the-shelf approach. Want to get your kids into alarms? Try our new learning guide for Dear Diary Alarm. It uses our new Circuit Playground microcontroller that is a one stop solution for a light activated alarm. Your child can have fun choosing what they want to protect and learn about electronics at the same time.

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