Aussie builds Get Smart shoe phone

Fairfax

DIAL 99: Paul Gardner-Stephen's shoe phone has been so popular among the geek crowd that he is considering selling it via online stores.

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Forty years after clumsy agent Maxwell Smart immortalised the shoe phone, an Australian computer scientist has developed a real-life version and published detailed step-by-step instructions online.

It may seem like an impractical novelty in a world of iPhones and tiny bluetooth headsets but the inventor, Paul Gardner-Stephen, insists there are practical applications - including, surprisingly enough, helping the elderly.

And the gadget has been so popular among the geek crowd that he is considering selling it via online stores.

Gardner-Stephen, 32, a post-doctoral fellow in bioinformatics at Adelaide's Flinders University, made the gadget as a prop for a church camp drama presentation that had a "Get Smart" theme. He also created an Agent 86-inspired cone of silence and 1950s phone booth, although these were just props.

But after scouring the web and discovering that no one had created a shoe phone that was fully functional as a phone and could also be worn as a shoe, Gardner-Stephen set himself the challenge.

The first iteration, made in October last year, was simply a Bluetooth headset embedded in the sole of a shoe. The wearer still had to carry a mobile phone in his or her pocket.

Then, in December, Gardner-Stephen refined his design and, with the help of a cobbler friend, embedded a Motorola V620 in one shoe and a Bluetooth headset in the other. The cobbler crafted hollow heels with a hatch that could fit the phone and headset.

"It's surprising, your first thought is it's completely impractical, but it's actually not that bad - the phone rings, you slip off the shoe, you open the heel and press the button and you're talking in around the same time it would take to fumble in a bag and pull the phone out," he said.

Gardner-Stephen used the gadget as his main phone for three days and described the experience as "quite good fun", except when he had to pick up a call while driving.

"I've had a couple of bemused looks, but it turns out that universities are quite resilient to the unusual - I've walked several hundred metres outside on campus talking into the shoe and no one's really paid any attention," he said.

Gardner-Stephen quickly discovered that the concept could be applied to caring for the elderly and remote patient monitoring. He said storing electronics in a shoe would be unobtrusive and wouldn't be objectionable to older people who aren't comfortable with modern technology.

The shoe could hold equipment used to store and communicate pulse, blood pressure, blood oxygenation and other information. It could also be used in nursing homes whereby the shoe could detect a fall and automatically place a call to a medical carer over a speaker phone.

"Shoes are well accepted by most people, and are simple to put on and take off," Gardner-Stephen said.

He said he had recruited several final-year engineering students to work on these practical uses as part of their major projects.

The engineer also published detailed instructions on creating both the first- and second-generation shoe phone on instructables.com. Thousands of people have checked out his design and at least one decided to build their own, selling it on eBay last month for A$60.

Gardner-Stephen said that, given the immense online interest, he might begin selling the shoe phones this year through online stores such as thinkgeek.com.

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