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• Initial thoughts and considerations

  Chron-O-John • 5 hours ago • 0 comments

  The party, where I want to wear the vest, takes place in 8 days. That’s a very – ahm – condensed timeframe to advance the project from an idea into a working state.

  I wouldn’t necessarily consider this a problem. I need a clear deadline and some sort of pressure to do stuff and work best. So that’s a given.

  I also need a good plan and milestones, so I don’t get lost in unimportant details and I need to cut corners wherever possible (not that iPhones have that many corners to begin with, most of them are rounded) to progress as fast as possible. I don’t need perfect solutions for the first working vest – I need working ones.

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  So, what's the bare minimum?

  • 4 Phones in portrait mode side-by-side on the front and the back of the vest. Each displaying a random number for some time
  • 8 Phones on either side, maybe 4 more (two left and right) on/as straps leading to the shoulders.
  • That would be 12 phones on the front and back, so 24 in total. Do I have that many phones? I am pretty sure (yet I still must get them from the office as I am on holiday right now)
  • Would that all be the same phone model as initially planned? Not quite sure, maybe not.
  • Does that matter? – not really. I plan to 3d-Print mounting for each phone, so as long as the screens are roughly the same size it should be fine.
  • I will use a web browser and some JavaScript to display the digit. Stored locally, so no internet/Wi-Fi connection is required.

  Ok, the 4-phone on either side version sounds more like a fallback solution that can be achieved using some glue, tape and a safety vest. Good to have that.

  What do I really want to have?

  Do I have bigger plans and ideas that would require a network or even internet connection? Definitely! But let's not go overboard with ideas and settle for a minimum first.

  Nevertheless, I will write down additional cool stuff I have in mind:

  • Have the digits scroll through the phones
  • Implement some sort of voice recognition, so that every time a phone picks up someone saying a number, all the phones are displaying it - that would be really awesome, but will most likely require an internet connection to offload voice recognition. It would definitely require the devices to be interconnected via Wi-Fi. Not that much of a problem
  • Send the video of a front-facing phone’s camera to the opposing one on the backside and vice versa to sort of create the illusion of a “hole” in my body
  • Display audio activated Winamp-Style visualizations. Would be cool for further use on concerts and festivals, but not all that useful at the party – I plan to stick with the numbers theme

  Creating the possibility that the phones are somehow synchronized (I think of WebSockets) will allow me to quickly integrate new devices. The party will start outdoors, but it will transition the birthday person’s home later on. Other guests could then simply open a website and place their phone somewhere around the apartment, so when the (planned) number recognition kicks in the corresponding number is literally (or should I say digitally) displayed everywhere.

  I am kind of having an epiphany right not. I simply want to write a wordplay on digits vs letters and realized, why its called digital. Digits! As opposed to literals – letters. Mind blown. But back to the topic.

  Challenges

  Thinking about the project, what would be the biggest challenges to overcome?

  Battery runtime

  Even with the minimal glue-and-tape version battery runtime could be an issue. The party starts at 14:00 (so 2 pm freedom-time) and will likely go on until 5 in the morning or so next day. That being an ambiguous plan by itself (even without the phones), considering that the screens need to be at maximum brightness while being outside, I doubt that the phones will last with one charge of their already aged batteries. So I need an easy and quick way to recharge them all at once or even have them connected to a power bank all the time. Considering...

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