Musical Sneakers Make Beats While Hitting the Dance Floor

Rather than step to the beat, what if your steps actually made the beat? With Lara Grant’s pair of musical sneakers, they can. The Bay Area-based designer has created new kicks that produce sounds as you move your feet on the dance floor, enabling you to map any sample and send audio wirelessly via Bluetooth.

The bottom of each shoe has three soft switches made of conductive fabric that are connected to an Adafruit Feather Bluefruit 32u4, which is programmed to act like a USB keyboard. This way, whenever a switch is closed, it’s read as a keystroke. These strokes are then mapped to sound files using Soundplant software.

The shoes wirelessly connect to the computer over Bluetooth, so a sound file players every time you tap a toe or click a heel. You can even hook up a Bluetooth speaker to amplify the sound! What’s more, each sneaker features a rechargeable LiPo battery with an on/off switch.

You can see the high-tech high tops in action below, as well as read the project’s entire writeup here.