You know how you start tapping to your body when you can’t get that catchy tune out of your head or when hear a nice song, DrumPants turns that into actual music with its wearable kit that that you can attach to your clothing to turn your body into a walking band. The startup was recently featured on an episode of SharkTank. And even though it was overlooked by investors, DrumPants founders Lei Yu and Tyler Freeman are feeling confident that they can make a difference in wearable technology in the future.
“With the advent of the iPhone and iPad there’s over 300 music apps available but musicians and DJ’s are still using these large, bulky hardware pieces,” Lei explained during an interview. “So we wanted to attack the problem from a different angle. Building off of what Tyler and his friends had hit upon in grad school we saw that tapping on your body is a really natural way to control midi sounds and use the motions of drumming without the equipment.”
After its successful Kickstarter campaign back in 2013, DrumPants has been radically improved well beyond its early prototypes. According to DrumPants founders Lei Yu and Tyler Freeman, they have had some trouble promoting the device as a final product as the case was designed off of cheap 3D prints, and teaming up with Fictiv, the 3D hardware prototyping startup, has been one of their wisest decisions.
“When people see this (holding up the first prototype casing) and you tell them it’s a 3D print they are very forgiving of it because they think the final one is going to be way better and that all the little issues are going to go away. It’s not real to people,” said Lei. “Fictiv knew exactly which machines and which types of plastics to use. Fictiv printed case actually feels like the real thing.”
Now, with DrumPants all polished up and ready to ship out, Lei and Tyler are looking for more ways to take DrumPants beyond just making music and apply the technology to make people’s lives much easier.
“You walk into your house and if you have one of those Phillps smart bulbs you have to take out your phone, unlock it, find the app, open the app, find the button to turn on the lights and then turn them on,” Tyler showed an example use of the DrumPants technology. “A standard light switch is so much easier than that! But if you’re wearing a controller that knows you’re in your house and that it’s nighttime, then you can just tap on your body and it knows to turn on the lights.”
DrumPants has a bright future ahead and with back-up support from startups like Fictiv, developers will definitely find new ways to surprise us in the very near future.
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Follow @nrjperera – Roshan Jerad Perera
