TURN UP: This LED Rave Headband Will Change the Way You Party

Photo credit: Jason Bergman

Do you ever wish you could turn a little more up? Have you ever been at a festival and wanted to rave even harder? Do you love music? Well, you, my friend, are in luck. The most party-friendly accessory ever to be conceptualized, the most turnt up piece of machinery you can turn on, the “first high-quality wearable technology engineered for the electronic dance music community” has arrived.

It’s called the Halo, and its makers, a pair of recent Northeastern grads named Ryan and Danny, have launched a Kickstarter to put the prototype into wider production. Is there a market for this? Obviously. Have you heard of EDM? Are you aware of molly? Can you deny the brilliance of a slogan like ‘Built for festivals. Optimized for raging.’?” Here are some of the other selling points of the Halo, according to the Kickstarter:

Beautiful LED Display — Light up the night with 32 RGB LEDs.

Intelligent Beat Recognition — Unparalleled audio response discerns different frequencies and the beat structure of the music around you.

Epic Battery Life — Rock out for 15+ hours on a single charge, and power back up via USB.

Festival-Proof — Rage on, trusting your Halo will make it through festival after festival.

Infinite Patterns — Cycle through entrancing patterns with the click of a button and download new sets to keep things fresh.

Open Source — Develop for the Halo and help unleash the incredible potential of the first high-tech wearables for raves.

How sweet is this thing? Very sweet, as you can tell from the number of times the word “epic” is used to describe it. As anyone who’s tried to weather a music festival and had their phone dies know, preserving any kind of battery life under these circumstances is a Homeric task. So kudos for that. Personally, my favorite component of this is the open source part, which means that anyone can design their own light patterns and algorithms to match up the headband to music. Want your headband to spell out Morse code for “save me, I drank 12 Red Bull vodkas and am about to vomit everywhere” while you rage to Skrillex? That capability is just a few lines of code away, my partners in PLUR.

The Halo came together after its creators visited Ultra Music Festival in 2011 and wanted a light-up device to go with the music. They debuted a full-body suit the next year, and people kept asking where to buy it. This reaction gave them the idea to make a simpler, more marketable version: A headband. Perfect, of course, for all the real EDM heads out there. A few more insights from the Kickstarter page:

“We were so focused on packing as many LEDs onto your Halo as possible that we actually had to design our own flexible circuit boards. Not only that, but we peppered other components in between the LEDs to make the best use of the space, all so you can look as amazing as the stage does.”

“We’ll be continuously curating new patterns built by developers, keeping you on the cutting edge of wearable rave technology.”

“Water-resistant construction means a little rain or champagne shower won’t ruin your night.”

“Music is complex, and as humans, we can appreciate the different sounds and frequencies that make it up.”

Not only is music complex, not only is it sounds, it is dope, and with the Halo you will be prepared for the following dope situations:

– You find yourself in a room where everyone is turnt down, even though music is playing! Put on the Halo and let the party start.

– You’re at a music festival and a guy whips out some LED gloves. Put on the Halo and show him up.

– You’re at a music festival and a sudden power outage makes it impossible to see. With the light of your Halo, you are able to guide the other festival-goers to safety.

– You’re at Ultra, and you are kidnapped by Miami drug runners and taken aboard their yacht. Fortunately, they didn’t think to check if the black headband you’re wearing could do anything. When they’re not looking, you escape to the deck and turn on the Halo to broadcast an SOS signal, alerting the Coast Guard to your presence.

– You’re trying to impress a date, and it’s going poorly. You whip out the Halo, and they are instantly attracted to you. Fortunately it syncs well with your D’Angelo bedroom playlist, too.

– You’re at Burning Man, and you wander too far into the desert. Your Halo gives off the exact pattern aliens were told to look for, and they descend in a UFO to pick you up. You are carried away to a distant planet where there is no war or climate change or greed or unhappiness, where everyone lives off sweet cosmic nectars and enjoys a carefree lifestyle of free love unlike any our planet’s gravitational fields could sustain.

It’s safe to say you’ll never party the same way again.

Anyway, here’s a video about the project, which is on Kickstarter here.

Kyle Kramer has a message for you here. He’s on Twitter – @KyleKramer

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