The Apple Watch is a tiny square that's on your wrist. This could take up your entire arm. The Apple Watch may have a better resolution, but more space is the killer feature here. You can actually do stuff on this, unlike a microscopic little watch.
That's great. Then show some examples of that. My point was that the examples in the linked video were meh at best. The map's resolution was useless in functionality. The texting example was also weird, in that I don't want every other person in the room to see my texts. Things can be fun, but bad examples just don't do it justice.
Think of those as proof of concept. Imaginative types will come up with all sorts of interesting use cases. It is a pixel display on fabric, do whatever you want with it... pulse it to music, send notifications, just animate living textures...
I think the point here isn't whether this is ready for commercialization and practical consumer use immediately. The point is they made something that works and is easily comprehensible as to the kinds of things it makes possible. That's really impressive!
But club costumes are probably a pretty high margin market and with a lot of DIY people making costumes out of the latest neatest thing.
I don't know why you wouldn't be able to play recordings of electricsheep or something though, or just use a microphone to do effects based on audio. I'd imagine this gets adopted in costumes way before it's in something broadly used.
From the videos I've seen of this kind of EL wiring, you're doing a diservice to electricsheep if you're saying this kind of thing can generate the graphics quality of sheep. It is funny(coincidentally) as I have the AppleTV 4k ElectriSheep running on my TV while reading HN and listening to choons. The stuff in this article can't hold a candle to it.
EL stuff has been around for awhile. The one thing this particular post makes impressive is the sheer size of it working. As soon as Lady Ada brings out these kind of rolls, then we might see some cool monochrome environmental input animations. What I'd love to see is a durable fabric with individualy addressable LEDs woven within that is as durable and washable. Then, maybe we can see some sheeps on clothing.
