Viewnic

Inspiration

Visual stimuli is the future of tech, entertainment, and self expression. In with our society, what people display on their shirts is a extensive part of how they show the world who they are. The new age of digital technology motivated our group to provide people the ability to choose a more unique style. However, the concept of communicating without a learned language caused our focus to shift towards a product that can effectively show what a member of society stands for. Our group wanted to focus on the history of Kent State. The traumatic May 4th shooting was a pivotal part of our nation's history. To ignore it's significance on the 50th anniversary seemed an inadequate use of our resources and abilities.In many of their protests students would sit on the street or form peaceful rally. In response students were massacred and disgraced. 50 years later, people are still advocating what the Kent students stood for. To commemorate their memory we choose to display what the students believed in: peace, freedom, love, and most importantly, an expression of what they believed. The only difference that separates our history from our presence is how we communicate our ideals. Welcome to the future where your viewpoint can be understood in every language and every culture.

What Viewnic does

Through the use of WiFi, an LED screen hidden underneath a shirt can display images and video chosen by the user.

The Building Process

We created Viewnic through devising a plan to use our strengths in the most effective way possible while simultaneously working together to create a cohesive and logical product. Our group is made up of students studying Neuroscience, Fashion Design, Mechatronics Engineering Technology, and Computer Engineering Technology. We took 8 rolls of LED Tap and soldered them together. While devising a new program to take a photo or video and stream it over WIFI to the display, we sewed a harness to effectively hold the battery using weight distribution and to mitigate the weight of it. Then we built a case to hold all of the necessary components to display our product.

Challenges We Faced

With complicated processes, came difficult obstacles to overcome. Challenges we faced included finding the right materials to make the screen flexible while still displaying images successfully. Within the creation process of the screen one of the panels was not responding correctly. Through ingenuity we determined the best avenue to replace one bad LED. We tediously had to cut out the exact LED, solder and in a replacement. In addition we navigated through the difficulties in creating a recognizable image with few pixels. Finding the correct materials, and way to distribute the weight on the harness proved tricky with the limited supplies, and the necessity to keep the battery close to the user. However through collaboration of our best options, we came up with an effective system of straps that lock in the battery without the expense of back pain.

Accomplishments

Our proudest successes came from our most difficult challenges. Creating sequenced lights that create an image while remaining flexible and accessible for a shirt proved cumbersome. However when executed correctly caused our whole team to become excited. A similar mix of joy and exhaustion came from the process of creating a program to run the LED lights. Successfully executing the Viewnic Harness connection points stemmed from many painful hours of both machine and hand sewing. While our physical accomplishments vary in what each person worked on, what we all value most importantly was the new friends we made through the process. Being in vastly different majors, we otherwise wouldn't have encountered one other without the Fashion Tech Hackathon.

What We learned

With any big project came growth. With difficulty came experimenting and with innovation came both success and failure. Through the creation of Viewnic we learned how to effectively communicate with different personalities and talents,time management, better soldering techniques, and how to program the correct stimulation files.

What's next for Viewnic

In taking our product to the next level we will continue working to adjustments. This includes finding an equally strong battery that takes up less space and is lighter, better light resolution, and sourcing stronger materials for the harness. Upon completion of our goals, comes the possibility of taking our product to market. To find investors we would upload our product to websites such as Eventis, Kickstarter, or IndieGoGo where we would display Viewnic as a way to express oneself, the same as a post on social media explains who someone is.To gain popularity we would use the inexpensive use of giving our product to Social media influencer that focuses our marketing onto our target market, young adults ages 20-30. Essentially in the future it would become a real life extension of a status update as seen on Facebook.