What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sleep? Over the course of the hackathon I slept for less than an hour in a two day period. It was at the point where I was starting to hallucinate a war between dingoes and eagles swooping through hallways of the facilities trying to steal all the babies*. I was wobbly, and stairs were a no go. I started spouting my thoughts out loud without meaning to and mumbling incoherent rituals, spells, and incantations -- not really, but you get the idea. And now that you have considered my question you can either relate and agree that sleepy drunk is just the greatest state of being of all time or you can call me crazy and move on. Either way, you would most likely want to know why anyone would ever stay up that long; and if you can relate to me and are thinking not sleeping is the best, now is the time that I call you crazy. I didn’t sleep because I had work to do. I had pages of code to write and not nearly enough time to do it.

But I did and it was glorious.

In that short amount of time, I was able to develop a working app with an aesthetically pleasing interface and mildly entertaining animations. That's a lie, it wasn’t entertaining at all; I just made some things wibbly wobbly when the cursor was over them to match my fading vision. Also a lie, but while not entertaining, it did look great and, more importantly, it worked great.

But enough about me. I did not design this project on my own and I’ve hardly even explained the project at all by now. The project was a mesh network with an app designed to allow people to access and take full advantage of the network. Liam designed the hardware and embedded the devices into articles of clothing with the help of a fashion student we met that weekend. Caramon developed the mesh network itself which allowed the devices created by Liam to communicate and interact with each other. Caramon also helped me to design a chat platform within the app allowing you talk to people over the network.

A mesh network is awesome because it works locally. The devices, or nodes, link to each other when they are in close enough proximity creating a local, private, and personal connection with those around you. This is why a chat feature is completely necessary with an app like this. We also developed a media page where you could post pictures and videos for people on your network to see. This allows for other people to live life through your eyes. It allows others to see the magic of your surroundings that typically you would only be able to see. They can experience life through your perspective and vice versa. This is the only social media app designed to not suck you into a computer screen but to explore and meet everything and everyone around you.

Basically, this better sound awesome to you and if it doesn’t you need to know one last thing; the clothing we embedded the nodes into have neopixel LED’s sewn in. These lights look amazing and straight out of the future. The lights are programmable to different colors and patterns. But wait, there's more! I also previously mentioned that the clothes interact with each other! As the proximity changes the patterns change! They become more sporadic and rapid indicating you are getting closer to another person wearing what I like to Soft Wear -- punny, eh? This is to encourage interaction between users.

The network itself is called Meshh Network and the clothes are called Soft Wear. And these things have an immense amount of potential in your life. The network itself has many applications outside a social media app and it is extremely exciting for everyone on the development team to see where it could end up going. We believe in it and see a lot of potential in it. Also, apparently so do other people because a group of sharks have already tried to steal it. Which is incredibly flattering.

Also, shoutout to our intern, Gauge, for everything he did over the weekend. We would have died had it not been for him. And I might have actually been forced to take breaks and sleep had he not been there to help us in our time of need.

//Nikolai

*There were no babies, or dingoes, or eagles. It’s fine.