Fos – A wireless, fabric, wearable LED display

Fo̱s is a new paradigm in visibility. It’s a Velcro®-lined fabric patch that contains a super-bright LED grid you can program through your phone, wirelessly. The LEDs’ brightness will keep you visible and its video-stream capability will keep you noticed. You may not realize you’re wearing it since it weighs less than a golf ball and feels like normal fabric. [Fund on Kickstarter, here]

Staying active in a big city means rubbing shoulders with cars, buses, trains and wayward tourists. Bike lights are often ignored or stolen, and reflective tape and shoes only make you visible when light reflects off them. Accidents can happen in a crowded bike lane at dawn or when the sidewalk ends at dusk.

At the same time Fo̱s is keeping you safe, it also engages those around you. Inspire others by letting them know you’ve reached your fitness goal, how many calories burned as you burn them and who it is you’re running for.

The technology inside Fo̱s is remarkablel. With 64K shades of light for each and every pixel, gradients, 3D objects and other artwork are at your command. The 60+ frames-per-second processing power makes all movement smooth as the fabric it’s mounted to.

The Android®-based demo application and library package lets you get started quickly. Using the API, your smartphone or computer application instantly becomes connected to any number of Fo̱s units. Your app now can send arbitrary video, graphics and text to the user’s body at any time, in real time. Extend your demo code or import the library into your own application. A demo and library for iOS® and desktop OSes will follow shortly, all downloadable from the developer webpage.

Fo̱s was designed from scratch. The custom embedded system inside contains a powerful 32-bit microprocessor, flash memory, a sophisticated LED matrix driver and a very efficient power supply. The LED grid has elements that allow it to be extremely durable when flexing constantly.

All the controls, circuitry and LEDs are inside the fabric which makes it really easy to apply. Fo̱s can be tiled both horizontally and vertically to make seamless, larger displays. No SD cards or thick wires.

 

 

Fund Fos on Kickstarter here.

Info and images courtesy of Anders Nelson

Fos – A wireless, fabric, wearable LED display