TinyCircuits goes to Kent State’s Fashion Hackathon

TinyCircuits goes to Kent State’s Fashion Hackathon

After almost 48 hours of sleep deprivation, over caffeination, and teams working at paces that would rival some of the best pit crews in professional racing, the Kent State University Fashion Hackathon concluded in style with grand prize winners demonstrating their projects on the runway stage in the KSU School of Fashion. From magic mirrors allowing users to try on clothes in virtual reality to sports clothes designed to assist in medical aid and emergency location services, KSU’s #fashhack featured dozens of tech based fashion hacks, many of which utilized hardware developed just twenty minutes away at Tiny Circuits HQ in Akron, OH.

The Tiny Screen was one of the most heavily used components in the wearables category of the hackathon with numerous teams making use of the small, yet powerful, 96x64 OLED display. Teams building smart watches were particularly fond of the Tiny Screen as one grand prize winning team, Al-Timer, designed a watch and mobile app to help Alzheimer's patients with everyday living. Another team featured several smart watches designed for children that paired wirelessly with Bluetooth and radio enabled devices to teach kids how to code and make their own wearables by using a non-intimidating mobile app.

One first time hacker, a Freshman at KSU majoring in fashion merchandising, built her Cosmic Shades Project using two Tiny Screens and other Tiny Circuits hardware with zero previous coding experience.

"How I built it - The technology used for building this project [includes] two Tiny Circuits Tiny OLED Screens and digitally designed laser-cut acrylic glasses frames. The glasses were assembled with each Tiny Screen fastened over the acrylic cutout above the eye holes. The Tiny Screen technology is then hidden by an adhesive pocket that still allows for charging, programming, and operation of each screen. The acrylic frames were fastened together using acrylic glue. Challenges I ran into - I really loved the idea of using the Tiny Circuits technology, however I am a designer and not a coder, so I had to explore my resources in order to use this technology the way I wanted to."

With more than half of the participants having no previous hacking experience, many found Tiny Circuits products to be an easy way to start thinking and building outside of the box.  

Here were all the teams using Tiny Circuits hardware:

Al-Timer

TransMitten

No More Unicorns

Cosmic Shades