BLACKSBURG, Va., Feb. 13, 2015 – PixelPushers is a group of Computer Science students taking their Human-Computer Interaction capstone project to a massive scale. They begun working on a massive crowdsourced display in Lane Stadium, using all the attendees mobile device screens as pixels. This type of project, mobile phone mosaics, has been attempted by several companies before, including Sony, HTC, and Blinkendroid. “The current guinness world record is 400 devices, we’re optimistically looking at 50,000.” said PixelPusher developer Michael Peter. The current record belongs to China Unicom, Sohu IT and HTC which used 400 HTC One devices in July of 2013, playing a one minute advertisement. This project could beat that record by over a hundred times the amount of screens.
Updates from PixelPusher:
This week we have begun project research. In a place as crowded as Lane Stadium, it becomes tough for multiple smart phones to quickly communicate information. We have a number of open options that we have been discussing in regards to the connection problems the application might face. Possible solutions include using BlueTooth, tethering, among other options.
This past Friday, 2/13/2015, we met with our sponsor, Benjamin Knapp, who will be guiding us and giving us insight into the specifics involved with developing the application as well as the current state of the project up to this point. We also met with Matthew Favero, the original project developer, and got insight into where he succeeded, and had trouble.
Our team is very excited to bring this project to fruition and look forward to releasing updates in the near future. “It is very rare to be able to work on a project like this that will affect so many in our community at Virginia Tech” said developer Christopher Wood. Look for us in the next few weeks to keep up to date on what is happening at PixelPusher Studios.
A Look Into the Future:
We have been and will continue to research solutions and possible ideas for our implementation. With projects the size of this one, the solution comes in many different shapes and sizes so we will thoroughly research as many angles as possible before starting development in the next couple weeks.
As this project takes shape, look forward to exciting new updates and potential beta test events where we can demo and test out our software to gain feedback. We are excited at where this project is heading and hope you feel the same.
Mission Statement:
PixelPusher will allow football fans in Lane Stadium at Virginia Tech to display individual pixels on their phones which are part of a larger image. In this way PixelPusher acts as a crowd-sourced collaboration application that will bring together football fans everywhere. PixelPusher also aims to break the current world record of 400 connected devices. The application will be developed with the idea of simplicity and efficiency at heart, providing a lightweight, seamless user interface to football fans at Virginia Tech.
“PixelPusher Studios is an up and coming software development initiative aimed at revolutionizing how a single member of a crowd can have a huge impact on an event. ”
Contact Person: Christopher Wood cmw2379@vt.edu
