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Controlling the Taylor Swift Eras Tour wristbands with Flipper Zero
- tanseydavid 2y agoNow you've done it. Worldwide Flipper ban incoming over this. </sarc>
- doubled112 2y agoCan be used with cars and wristbands? Won't anybody think of the children?
- neilv 2y agoI had a similar thought, given recent news around negligent automaker security and scapegoating. For people who don't want the Flipper Zero banned... I suspect it might be smart to leave the name of the tool out of headlines. And when we do mention what tool we used in body of the article, that same sentence, or one next to it, should be clear that we're using such-and-such standard technology (e.g., RF or IR), and that the Flipper Zero is only one of many options for doing that. Promoting a particular product in headlines can be nice, but counterproductive if that same visibility is getting the product banned entirely.
- rvba 2y agoThose wristbands are a great example of manufacturing non recyclable garbage. I understand that some fans might still want some souvenier, but this particular thing is an example of unecological waste.
- jgrahamc 2y agoExcept that they aren't because they are literally collected at the end of the show and they can easily be opened and the batteries replaced. So they can be used from show to show.
- geerlingguy 2y agoHopefully they're cleaned somehow...?
- barbazoo 2y agoAre they being reused? Otherwise it's like 3D glasses that in many locations are just thrown into recycling. Edit: From their sustainability page it seems like they're actually "refurbished" and reused. :+1:
- palata 2y agoThem being collected does not mean that they are reused. But hopefully they are, because they make a lot of them. The thing is: if it's more profitable to make new ones than to reuse the old ones, they most certainly will go that way.
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y agoThey look designed for reuse. The major tell is that the case is snap-closed and not an ultrasonic weld or adhesive.
- palata 2y agoYes they do, which is why I hope they are :-)
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
- skipants 2y agoThey have this sustainability part on their website: https://pixmob.com/sustainability https://pixmob.com/sustainability It does look like they have boxes for you to return it at the end of the show. It doesn't seem too bad when I take it at face value. I'm sure the reality of how sustainable it is is a bit more complex.
- Maxion 2y agoIt's obviously not sustainable on any level, it's a device produced for effects. Concerts in general aren't sustainable. Most of the things we do aren't sustainable. It's nice that they collect them after shows, but still shouldn't call this product sustainable.
- samatman 2y agoI disagree. I expect industrial civilization will continue indefinitely, meaning, we will continue manufacturing cute special-effect gizmos, and having fancy concerts with millions of dollars in special-purpose manufactured goods, and people will continue to have fun. That's what sustainable means.
- Carrok 2y ago> That's what sustainable means. No. No it is not.
- palata 2y ago> That's what sustainable means. That's not how words work. You can't just make up their meaning like this.
- avarun 2y ago> sustainable > adjective > 1. able to be maintained at a certain rate or level. It is quite literally what sustainable means. Maybe don’t go around correcting people on the meaning of words if you haven’t bothered checking a dictionary?
- jdiff 2y ago> Since these wristbands are designed for reuse they are easily opened revealing two batteries and a lovely little circuit board. The only part that has a shorter shelf life than the rest is the fabric part of the wristband which may later be swapped out to serve another show.
- PobedaRossia 2y ago[flagged]
- basil-rash 2y agoWhat a delightfully simple solution! I have to imagine if I were given this problem I would muck it all up with wristbands assigned to seats and a 5G/IOT network needing to be installed at every stadium and custom control logic needing to be written and customized for every stadium… Whereas they just hook up an IR lamp and use the exact same lighting control procedures every stage tech knows blindfolded. Brilliant!
- stavros 2y agoI had the same reaction, this is a really hard problem, unless you solve it the way they did. Ingenious.
- Waterluvian 2y agoI also appreciate when designers recognize “this is the kind of thing where a 95% hit rate is fine.”
- preinheimer 2y agoI think there’s also the whole “the people with the wrist bands -want- them to work” part. Which is super helpful. Yes, you could hide your band under your hand, now it’s not glowing like everyone else’s… congrats you feel left out.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoAnd it isn't secure, but, it doesn't have to be. In theory someone can bring a high strength IR beamer thingy to an arena and draw penises or offensive texts on people's bracelets, but that's a manageable risk. Protecting against that would make the devices much more expensive. I mean the components in this one are a few bucks at most, right?
- xg15 2y agoYeah. My first thought was "have fun smuggling any kind of bulky electrical equipment into a Taylor Swift concert, let alone a stage light. Security will not even be mad." But on second thought, I think there might be an actual scenario to worry about: Activists hijacking the system to show political messages. For that they'd "only" have to beam the IR to a small spot of the room (but with much higher "resolution" than the normal effects). As long as the symbol/text/whatever is still legible enough that people recognize it and can take pictures of it, they'd have achieved their objective. Something like this might be possible with a much weaker, purpose-built emitter that could be hidden under clothing. Too much risk and effort for some dumb dick joke, but thinkable if people have some kind of political motivation. As a "bonus", the first blame would probably fall on the unfortunate people whose wristbands lighted up with the message, while the real perpetrators - the ones with the emitter - remained hidden. There is an easy fix as well though: As the system "paints" with digital signals and not light, the old lighting rule that colors mix only additively doesn't hold anymore - so you could add a "don't light up for the next 10 seconds" command to the wristbands and just have the stage beam that command continously whenever no effect is wanted.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- eastdakota 2y agoI may have gone to the Taylor Swift show in Lisbon, wondered how they were able to precisely control these without carefully handing them out, gathered a few from my fellow concert goers, and presented them to John last night over dinner with a challenge to figure it out. All my guesses were more complicated than the actual answer.
- jgrahamc 2y agoThank you for the nerd-snipe, but thank goodness others had done the reverse engineering otherwise this would have been a long night...
- eastdakota 2y agoI still wonder if it would be possible for a rogue concert goer to hijack a side of the stadium to display something. All sorts of trouble you could cause.
- stavros 2y agoWell, it would, if you had a 30W infrared spotlight with you.
- eastdakota 2y agoWhich begs the question: how hard is it to build a 30W, portable IR spotlight that you could get through a concert’s metal detector unnoticed?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mcpherrinm 2y ago> Taking photos/videos on small hand-held cameras and smartphones is permitted. I suspect you could fit that into the form factor for a "small hand-held camera" that is apparently permitted into the tour.
- jaygreco 2y agoVery cool! I’ve been to a few shows with these and was pretty enthralled with the level of effects that are possible given the Simplicity of the setup. I brought one wristband home hoping to mess with it but never got around to it.
- geor9e 2y agoHere's a video of the high powered invisible IR searchlights projecting the colors onto the crowd (looks like its triggering the RAINBOW_MOTION fade from the github link pixmob_special.ir) https://www.tiktok.com/@micahstgeorge2/video/7235510761328610602 https://www.tiktok.com/@micahstgeorge2/video/723551076132861...
- dogben 2y agoIs high power IR lamp safe for eyes?
- jpalawaga 2y agoyou mean like the sun?
- nvy 2y agoThe sun is decidedly unsafe for eyes.
- retrac 2y agoThe sun also emits in the visible wavelengths. Your eyes do not feel pain from bright lights due to the heat or similar. It's a response to brightness, in the visible spectrum. Without the visible component, there's no pain. With unhappy optical circumstances it could cook the retina because the pupil is dilated and there's no instinctive response to look away. Not sure how plausible those circumstances are. But I sure wouldn't put a 10 watt IR LED source right up to my eyeball.
- eythian 2y agohttps://arstechnica.com/health/2023/11/bored-ape-creator-says-uv-lights-at-apefest-burned-attendees-eyes-and-skin/ https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/11/bored-ape-creator-say... It can also happen with (the wrong type of) UV lights.
- input_sh 2y ago
- squarefoot 2y agoBack in the day smartphones with GPS became widespread, I had a more convoluted but much cheaper idea that involved no external hardware: an app that would register to a database with seat position, then refine it using GPS (in case someone is changing seat or wandering around), then it would have been just a matter of keeping the phone in sight using a phone necklace: the app would download its sequence to be played (each screen would essentially act as a big RGB pixel) then synchronize the pattern against NTP+GPS precise timing, then wait for the right moment to play it. Phone in closed spaces could not have used GPS, so they would rely on seat registration, although I was exploring the idea to use Bluetooth or ad-hoc WiFi links to synchronize with nearby devices to detect movement (that is, if I have say 5 devices very close, their seats match while mine doesn't, very likely I'm the one who moved elsewhere and my phone would update position accordingly). Probably too complicated to gain success, but I didn't even try to develop it beyond the simple idea; laziness and other problems sucked me away from any creative work.
- taylorfinley 2y agoDon't want to ask you your name or location to preserve privacy, but do you happen to live near what used to be a really cool coffee shop, and do you have an awesome garage with a plasma cutter? If so I think you told me about this project a decade ago while we built a little backyard forge!
- squarefoot 2y agoCentral Italy here, and no, unfortunately I never lived near a cool coffee shop and I never had a garage with a plasma cutter, but talked about the idea to some friends roughly in 2011 so it is possible that the word traveled around.
- taylorfinley 2y agoMy buddy was working on exactly the same project around then in Austin tx. He was trying to make it as a web app with access to location permissions, where the page's background color would change for each individual pixel in the virtual display. Concertgoers would visit the url and their phone would become a pixel in the screen. He was trying to figure out how to get better location resolution when we talked about it, sounds like you guys had similar ideas and both discovered the implementation was trickier than it initially seemed it would be. I wonder how many other folks worked on that idea around that time?
- zzzeek 2y agoWe spent a week in Disney World last month where we used Disney Magic Bands. I thought they were a total blast, they serve as your room key, ride / park passes, then they are lighting up and buzzing all over the park when interactive things are nearby. During fireworks shows they add their own light show based on your proximity to the event. Sure, they are also tracking our every step throughout the park but this felt like a good thing, like if our 9 year old got lost, his band would totally identify who he's supposed to be with and where we are.
- Animats 2y agoCan they apply an electric shock to the user if they do something Disney doesn't like?
- FridgeSeal 2y agoConversations about DRM and Copyright will shock the user into submission until the Mouse’s elite lawyer-hitmen can arrive to beat you before suing you into the ground.
- glitchc 2y agoApparently punching Mickey doesn't count [1]. [1] https://insidethemagic.net/2023/03/world-renowned-tiktoker-disneyland-punches-mickey-mouse-ab1/ https://insidethemagic.net/2023/03/world-renowned-tiktoker-d...
- SV_BubbleTime 2y agoI want the old internet back, not whatever this is supposed to be.
- adolph 2y agoSomething conceptually similar exists: Shock Clock - The Ultimate Silent Alarm for Heavy Sleepers, Hard of Hearing, Couples, and Shift Workers - Wake Up on Time, Create Better Habits https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EZ77IOY https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EZ77IOY I've been able to train myself to wake with a much less expensive simple vibrating wristband.
- fortran77 2y agoDisney patented a very similar system in 2002 (it may be expired now). These were the "Magical Moments" pins, hats, wands, etc, that were sold in the parks. Controlled by IR transmitters. (I worked on this project and still have the transmitters in my office) https://patents.google.com/patent/US7564426B2/ https://patents.google.com/patent/US7564426B2/
- codazoda 2y agoThat’s interesting, I’ve never noticed them used. Do they still do this? I’m aware of the bands but I never noticed the magic moments stuff.
- codetrotter 2y agoNice write up! I would also add that OP should spell out the text from the circuit board in their blog post, so that people who pick one apart and Google the text can also find this blog post. Pixmob PALM V2.6r1 And even the date stamp (c) 20230629 and also the part that says Designed with ♥ (love) in Montréal
- I_o_IllI__o_I 2y agoThat's smart bro, thanks for the suggestion. I'm sure OP will appreciate it. Will those sort of simple changes even be able to make much of a difference compared to those heavily SEO optimised blogspam sites though?
- TeMPOraL 2y agoSurprisingly, yes. SEO blogspam rarely optimizes for details this specific, unless it's mainstream technology (like, idk. version numbers on Windows or iPhones).
- shiandow 2y agoProvided we still have search engines that can search for literal text a few years from now, I think it should work.
- Ylpertnodi 2y agoThree cheers for the date format.
- rrr_oh_man 2y agoWhat’s so special about February 20, 2030 (6:29am)?
- nfriedly 2y agoPutting the year first makes it unambiguous. Some places do month-day-year, and other places do day-month-year, so any date up to the 12th of the month can be confused. But if the year comes first then it's always year-month-day. Also, a 4-digit year is important here.
- doctorhandshake 2y agoThis effect is really cool but I can’t help but think of the huge piles of e-waste it must produce after every show as these wristbands go in the bin.
- nickthegreek 2y agoPretty sure they have specific collection bins. Many keep them as a memento of the experience though.
- wrboyce 2y agoColdplay had similar wristbands when I saw them in Wembley last year and a big thing about their tour was sustainability. They definitely had collection bins for them at the exits, but I kept mine to satisfy my geeky curiosity.
- chrisldgk 2y agoTurns out it’s the same company that makes the wristbands for the Coldplay shows, so chances are it’s the exact same here
- mrighele 2y agoIs there anything similar that can be bought as a consumer, for example the Bluetooth one that they mention in the video ? This gave me a few ideas that could be fun at the kid's parties. Seems something not hard to do with wireless-enabled microcontroller and leds, but I don't trust myself to do something safe in the hands of a kid.
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y agoI'm actually in the middle of doing something kind of similar with wireless, but Bluetooth/BLE doesn't have the range to handle a stadium like this. Since the hardware that I'm using has high power LEDs and optical sensors, I'm now thinking of incorporating a similar mode to my project. I really like this post, it gave me a lot of ideas :-)
- zw123456 2y agoWho is this Taylor Swift Person?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- DaSHacka 2y agoCreator of a fairly popular programming language
- speed_spread 2y agoAnd of a fairly popular math series
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoA faster version of a polynomial used for cryptography.
- Ylpertnodi 2y agoShe's a crooner.
- easton 2y agoThe lead architect of the SWIFT payments system.
- some_random 2y agoThey discovered the Taylor Series
- pbj1968 2y agoPretty neat how those work but those Korean ones look way better.
- herunan 2y agoIn the video, the CEO of Pixmob seems like a nice, humble guy: “the wristbands are really stupid, but we like it that way.”
- jezzamon 2y agoThat sounds more like a boast to my ears. It's like if someone solves a complicated software problem with a simple (in other words, stupid) system. Not saying he sounds arrogant. Just describing good engineering.
- thedudeabides97 2y ago[dead]
- Rossimac 2y agoI took mine apart mid-show to figure out how it's doing it's thing. Brilliantly applied tech, but I couldn't help but think of the e-waste from those fans who don't cherish something like this enough to keep as a memento. Edit: seeing others commenting on sustainability and pointing towards their website. Fair enough. Good experience had and it's not the worst. https://pixmob.com/sustainability https://pixmob.com/sustainability
- guappa 2y agoThe 1st thing i thought when I opened the article: "what a useless mass production of garbage"
- diydsp 2y agoI contracted for them a number of years ago... probably one of their biggest early shows for Arcade Fire... to address sustainability at the time, they had a microphone inside their devices. At the end of the show, they sent a special command that switched it over into "color organ" mode so you could hold it up to your stereo at home and see a trippy light show! (I wrote the audio-to-trippy rgb led code). It was cool, but even better they're re-using them now. It is a great little company in a huge old industrial factory in Montreal. Hi, Vincent!
- phkahler 2y ago>> At the end of the show, they sent a special command that switched it over into "color organ" mode so you could hold it up to your stereo at home and see a trippy light show! That is one of the most awesome things I've read - a company making an attempt at increasing the usefulness of the product after it serves their intended purpose. Such a sharp contrast to the norm of bricking things that might be useful to people just because the company in no longer interested.
- vinlc 2y agoYesssssss! Good times and sleepless nights :) Hi Noah <3
- 2y ago
- deadbabe 2y agoDo people really think this is that ingenious of a solution? It seems obvious. Most likely many people here simply don’t have the domain expertise in that tech.
- Liftyee 2y agoDo you have said domain expertise? Of course it would seem obvious if you did. Personally I'm less familiar with IR technologies than RF, so I was expecting some radio-controlled design inside (with an overpowered IC). What they actually did seemed to me like one of those beautifully simple solutions which opened my mind a little. Sometimes simplicity is the most ingenious.
- mbirth 2y agoBig Clive did analyse a similar Pixmob wristband here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=tkHmD0BZK04 https://youtube.com/watch?v=tkHmD0BZK04
- fergie 2y agoI'm surprised we don't see more of Big Clive on HN
- _spduchamp 2y agoThe video lists 3 different technologies for this kind of lighting control; RF, IR, and Bluetooth. The last one used in K-pop shows for very detailed effects. Those require the audience to buy a $100 souvenir light, and connect it to an app on their phone. What a data capture system!
- RobotCaleb 2y agoA friend and I built a proof of concept of a similar thing. We could do almost per pixel playback of video on the audience without the K-pop Bluetooth style setup or assigned seats. We used computer vision and infrared beacons and timing groups to expand out to tens of thousands of them.
- wodenokoto 2y agoMeanwhile the Black Pink glowsticks, which retails at nearly $100, have Bluetooth and require firmware updates before a new concert. Taylor Swifts' solution seems a bit more crowd friendly in my oppinion.
- mordae 2y agoIsn't it kinda dangerous to light up the audience with high power IR light? It could cause real eye damage.
- anonu 2y agoI wonder how many locations they can encode for? They must know where each IR device is located based on seat assignments. It's as if they're sending UDP packets out and each receiver must listen to all messages and know which light sequence to run.
- Liftyee 2y agoThey're using the directionality of the IR transmitter for "addressing", so to light up an area they just point the transmitter towards it and broadcast a command that all the receivers run. Quite an elegant method, in my opinion.
- anonu 2y agoIt seems like the RF model has more granular targeting than the IR model. The IR can work by focusing a narrow IR beam on the crowd... the RF model appears to be able to address groups of tags based on their pre-programmed location. In the video they show the tags already placed on the seats. So presumably they've laid them out based on these groups.
- grishka 2y agoInteresting, I had no idea these are a thing. It's been a very long time since I've last been to a large concert.
- jairuhme 2y agoI was at a Cavs playoff game and they had these as well. I would guess they will become more popular. I've seen at some games, I think a Browns regular season game, you had to download an app and then give them access to your flashlight which I was not interested in. So this is a nice alternative to create the desired atmosphere without gaining access to users phones
- grishka 2y agoWell I'm not into sports, and I live in Russia so as you can imagine it'll be a while until we have any large concerts here again. I'm not nearly desperate enough to travel just for a concert, but if one coincides with me being abroad... Let's just say it's complicated. The only time I've been on a truly enormous, tens-of-thousands-people-sized concert it was The Killers in Moscow, as part of the Park Live festival, in like 2013. Nothing like these wristbands was invented yet. On a Zemfira concert in 2016, I somehow remember paper stars getting passed around so you would hold one in front of your phone flashlight. Cute. So yeah cool tech, a shame I won't get to see it in the next 10 years.
- rayiner 2y ago> Since they are projecting infrared with moveable projector they can sweep effects around the stadium, and cover the projector with cut outs to make things like hearts. That is wild! I had assumed this was controlled by some sort of wireless communications signal.
- g15jv2dp 2y agoWell it is a (unidirectional) wireless communication signal.
- itsthecourier 2y agoOh yeah, Infrared Radiation right to your audience eyes Wondering why I have to double check to not get my retinas fried in the lab, but it's safe in a concert
- tiagod 2y agoThey just need to get the equivalent amount of light into each sensor as your TV remote gets into your TV. I doubt it would get unsafe before rising the power by many orders of magnitude... Especially considering unshielded kW IR lamps are used everywhere for heating.
- Shared404 2y agoHuh, neat! They used these at Loveloud last year, and I've been wondering how they worked. I've still got mine, just one more reason to get a Flipper Zero I suppose!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- neya 2y agoIt would be interesting to see if someone can carry their own IR lamp and display arbitrary letters. Especially in a Taylor Swift concert..hmmm.
- coupdejarnac 2y agoThe most surprising IR controlled device I've seen lately is a butt plug. Avoiding FCC testing for the win.
- stockhorn 2y agoI would love to see a reverse engineering approach of the original mcu firmware. So far everything I found seems to cover the IR protocol only. The MCU seems to be unlabeled (https://github.com/sueppchen/PixMob_waveband/wiki/MCU https://github.com/sueppchen/PixMob_waveband/wiki/MCU )
- tonymet 2y agothe CEO is very humble . it's a genius solution. Though, we shouldn't be talking about IR & FM as "old school" solutions. The best solution is whatever requires the least resources, lasts the longest, while providing the most creativity & utility. That should be the golden rule of engineering. Software engineers especially tend to dwell on overly complex solutions with gps, 5g, sensors, ARM cpus , etc -- and dismiss a mechanical implementation or simple circuit as "primitive" or "old school" / "old fashioned". Remember that every transistor & circuit is a point of failure. A mechanical solution can last 100 years (like my typewriters which still feel brand new). Simple circuits running industrial machines also last 100+ years. Complex ICs are lucky to last a few years, and often have high failure rates in operation. Why does a trashcan or toaster need an IC? This isn't a rant, it's really to highlight this company's amazing work and inspire more engineers to be proud of elegant solutions once again.
- overbrimming 2y agoThese engineers on TikTok made a vest for the Eras tour with LED strips that flash in sync with the wrist bands. Video below. Summary: they had a wrist band from a previous show, connected the terminals on its microchip to their own microcontroller, extracted signals from the wrist band man in the middle style, programmed the microcontroller to interpret the signal, lit up the vest. I thought it was rather in the spirit of hacker news. https://www.tiktok.com/@gnewjay/video/7231711001643879726 https://www.tiktok.com/@gnewjay/video/7231711001643879726