Dorothy Device Turns Ordinary Shoes into Smart Shoes

When it comes to wearable tech, there are no limits. I wonder if someday we’ll all be walking around covered in smart clothes, smart shoes, smart jewelry and smart accessories. That probably won’t happen any time soon, but if you like the idea of having smart shoes that can connect to your smartphone with the click of your heels, you are gonna love this device named Dorothy.

Imagine this – you want to send a text to your friends to let them know your location but you don’t want to do it manually, or you’re on a bad date and you want a way out, or you want to call a cab without making a traditional phone call, just use Dorothy.

Dorothy consists of a tiny device called Ruby and a corresponding smartphone app. The device can slip onto almost any pair of ordinary shoes. It will turn your oldest pair of dumb sneakers into very smart shoes.

Like the name implies, Dorothy was inspired by the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz. In that movie, Dorothy has to click her heels three times while wearing her ruby slippers for the magic to begin. In the same way, you will click your heels three times to initiate a phone call, a text, etc. from your own shoes.

It’s quite an ingenious little piece of wearable tech, and I can think of so many situations where it would be useful. Aside from all the fun, I think this could be a great personal safety tool too.

Dorothy was created by iStrategy Labs. According to their website, this is how it works:

Dorothy is powered by the LightBlue Bean, an Arduino micro-controller with a built in Bluetooth chip, accelerometer, and coin cell battery. Simply clip the “Ruby” into your shoe, connect it to the Dorothy iPhone App, and select your desired action after a successful trigger (3 heel clicks). The onboard accelerometer sends a signal to your phone via Bluetooth (listening for spikes in the data over a short period of time).

As if that wasn’t geeky enough for you, the device itself is housed in a 3D printed little box, which is what slips onto/into your shoe. Unfortunately, right now this is just a fun prototype. When it becomes available for purchase someday, I’ll be one of the first ones in line.