Wednesday night HUGE invited members of the tech community to come to their Dumbo offices for the Wearable Tech Demo Night and check out eleven different wearable tech creations, several of which came from Brooklyn makers.
Modules were set up for each of the makers to present their creations to guests that night. A lot of people were there. RSVPs for the event maxed out a week before. Here are some of the makers that stood out:
Listen to Your Wrist
By Tarana Gupta
The device shown above, worn by its creator, keeps track of how well you are doing in protecting your wrist from repetitive motion injuries. The readouts above show the different assessments of different kinds of wrist movements. It warns you when you move too far out of the neutral position and also when you need to take a break.
Drop The Beat
By Wesley Chau
This device is a wearable electronic drum set, a vest. Chau explained that it’s meant to give the artist more of a presence during live performance. See more about it here. The video that goes with it is worth watching.
Heatit
By Sue Ngo & Eszter Ozsvald
Sue Ngo at Huge.
From the project’s overview: “Heatit is an open-source electronics platform to precisely outputs high current. You can use Heatit to develop projects and fabricate prototypes using dynamic materials that require current or heat to be activated – such as nitinol, resistive heating, thermochromic inks, solenoids and much more. The small size and modularity of Heatit boards allow easy integration within a wide range of static, mobile and wearable applications.”
Ngo told Technically Brooklyn that they have begun shipping HeatIt units to supporters of their Kickstarter and are looking forward to seeing applications coming back from users. She started realizing the need for a device like this as she worked on developing a tshirt that read out information about air pollution in its surroundings.
Ngo and Osvald were part of founding Brooklyn Research, which we covered earlier this year.
H.A.U.T.E
Hidden and Un-Tagable Eyewear
By Amelia Winger-Bearskin
Winger-Bearskin demonstrates her photography foiling specs.
The two images above featuring newly arrived Williamsburg resident, Amelia Winger-Bearskin, give the basic idea of what her invention, H.A.U.T.E., is all about. They give you a way to be seen out and about, but also prevent yourself from being recognizable in unwanted Facebook photos. Facial recognition software won’t be able to autotag you so your boss won’t know that “home sick” means “hungover.”
We asked if the glasses somehow detect cameras. She told us that one of her models reacts to a flash, but “The best way to use it is to just turn it on when you don’t want to be photographed,” she said.
She’s wearing one of several prototypes in this very, very early stage project. Less than a week old. See some more below.
A few other highlights from Wednesday night’s event:
The best known wearable tech of all, Google Glass, was represented by some Glass Explorers.
It was a large and gregarious crowd, as you can see below.
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