LED Flip Flops Add A Light Show To Your Casual Footwear

As wearable technology spreads its arm around the world, we’re bound to see more home-brew projects than actual consumer products. Why? Because there are way more people with ideas, than there are companies that so far dare to spend millions of dollars on developing this new form of technology. But it is a good thing, and it is bound to yield some really interesting gadgets, like these LED flip flops for example, totally unheard of and quite a fresh approach.

The brain behind these LED flip flops is Instructables user Xadow, and they could definitely be called wearable technology. The modder took a pair of ordinary flip flops and got to work. The DIY build might seem easy and straightforward, but it has some secrets that we just can’t see from the presented pictures.

In order to pull off the build, the parts necessary are a Xadow main board, a Xadow 3-Axis, a Xadow Breakout and a W2828 programmable RGB Led Strips (with integrated driver). The Xadow inbuilt accelerometer comes in handy when you want to “animate” the lights when walking. This basically means that you can make the different colors wander around the LED flip flops and create a pretty neat and eye-catching effect.

Oh, and of course, you need a pair of flip flops in order to complete the project. The material in the flip flops is ideal for implementing these LED lights and board, so with a little bit of creativity you can pretty much create whatever pattern and light show you want. I want to say that there is nothing more geeky than a pair of LED flip flops, but I am probably wrong as whenever I make that statement there is always something geekier that comes along and boggles our minds.

I would use these LED flip flops in the rain. Not that I think you would get shocked to oblivion, but because the LEDs would probably not work for very long I am afraid, so if it starts raining you would do best in packing the LED flip flops up in your backpack and walk barefoot until you get back home. There is a simple solution for everything, isn’t there?