Netflix Socks Pause Your Show When You Fall Asleep

A special pair of socks is designed to make sure you never miss a moment of binge watching again. The high-tech Netflix accessories are programmed to know when you’ve fallen asleep and pause your show for you, for all those nights when you’re watching that next-to-last episode of Jessica Jones through bleary eyes. 

The binge-watch-enabling specialists at Netflix teamed up with Maker Media, the team behind the Maker Faire, to create a pattern for a pair of wooly footwear that do more than keep your toes warm. They’re lined with a microcontroller and an accelerometer (similar to the ones fitness trackers like Fitbit use to track sleep) to pinpoint when you start snoozing and transmit a signal to your television, pausing that all-important scene. You can make these DIY techie socks yourself, provided you’ve got a little programming know-how. 

If you’re a knitter, you can use the templates provided by Netflix to create patterns inspired by shows like BoJack Horseman and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, or you could just pull a pair of socks out of your drawer. If you really want to be accurate about sleep detection, you could even add a pulse sensor. 

You’ll need an Arduino microcontroller, an accelerometer, and a few other materials slightly more technical than your average sock components. Instructions are here. 

All images courtesy Netflix