David Forbes' Wearable LED Display
What’s the discerning scientist wearing to this year’s Burning Man gathering in the Nevada desert? Why, a 160×120 pixel color LED display built into a lab coat, of course. Dave Forbes built the display using thousands of LEDs attached to flex boards and capable of displaying NTSC video from a standard RCA jack (in the video, he’s playing video directly from his iPod). Running for about an hour off a single 12v battery, this $20k piece of fashion history is certainly going to make Dave the man to watch at Burning Man . . . literally.
The video showing off this technological terror he constructed is quite impressive, though his next addition to the coat should be some low power speakers so that people can hear Mr. Burns as well. The coat includes controls for color and brightness, and USB jack to charge the iPod being used to play the video (though I would think the battery would die in the coat before the iPod, so not really sure about that feature).
Take a look at pictures of the assembly and more detail about how it’s all working at Cathode Corner.
