The Future Applications Lab teamed up with Lancaster University to develop a system of “intelligent push-pins” which communicate through and draw power from the surface to which they are attached.

On a Pin&Play notice board, a series of coloured pins. They are red, orange or green – depending on the priority one assigns to a document that was posted on a notice board.

The pins inform the system when the user would like to be reminded of the existence of the document, and the need to pay attention to what it contains.

When the time has com, a blue LED built onto the pin will begin to flash and the user must unfasten the document from the board in order for the pin to stop flashing.

Information about when documents were posted, their level of priority and how much time they have before their reminder expires is displayed on a screen nearby and can also be accessed via a web interface, and the system can deliver the reminders via messages to the user’s e-mail inbox.

Among the many applications they imagined for their pins, they turned a Pin&Play network into a wearable network to interconnect various wearable devices, from mobile phones to wearable sensors.

The team will present the system at the UbiComp Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, to held September 7-10 in Nottingham, UK.