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By Bloomberg

Takehiro Hagiwara knows big ideas often start with small problems. For the morning-hating Sony Corp. engineer, that was a do-it-yourself alarm smart enough to ring until he got out of bed and shut the bathroom door.

His idea was MESH, a series of mix-and-match buttons, lights and sensors that make inventing as easy as pairing an Apple Inc. iPad with some wireless headphones. By linking the little, color-coded blocks with a mobile application, tinkerers can create devices that trigger cameras, send rain alerts or silence an alarm when a door swings.

“Anyone should be able to become an inventor,” Hagiwara, 36, said in an interview at Sony’s Tokyo headquarters. “We want to enable people to do in two minutes what used to take two weeks, or wasn’t possible at all.”

MESH uses the same sensors as the average smartphone to monitor changes in the real world and puts them into modules -- each the size of a pack of chewing gum -- that people can repurpose for do-it-yourself projects.

Want your snail mail to generate notifications the same way your e-mail does? Stick a blue accelerometer on the mailbox door and ask the application to let you know when it’s opened. Add a camera and a light-emitting diode to check whether the delivery’s worth a trip to the box.

Hagiwara’s bid to unleash your inner inventor was born out of Sony’s own push to revive its culture of innovation. MESH -- for “make, experience and share” -- is one of several in-house projects overseen by Chief Executive Officer Kazuo Hirai to get ideas flowing at the company that gave the world the Walkman.

Innovators Wanted

Hagiwara, who designed algorithms that guess your taste in movies or music, was among the first Sony workers to step forward after Hirai started the program in April. The CEO meets personally with developers in the unit to test prototypes and give feedback.

A three-block starter kit is available for $119 and includes a button, an LED and accelerometer, which knows whether it’s been shaken, flipped or tapped. For more advanced tinkerers, there’s also a general-purpose block, into which users can plug a variety of sensors, motors and connectors.

The iPad app is free and Sony has no immediate plans to make a version that works on Google Inc.’s Android system. Whether MESH will be marketed under the Sony brand or independently is unclear, Hagiwara said.

Hirai’s program has also produced a fashion watch with an e-paper face and wristband that turns its entire surface area into a display. Another one is the Qrio smart door lock. Flight home delayed? Share your virtual house keys with the neighbors via Facebook so they can feed the cat.

Crowdfunding Support

“The speed with which we got these up and running is unlike anything we’ve experienced in Sony before,” Hirai told reporters in Tokyo last week. “We have three more projects that are on the cusp of becoming a business. I’m dying to tell you about it but can’t say more yet.”

To gauge interest in innovations like MESH, Sony has turned to crowdfunding. Early adopters can get their own MESH blocks by supporting their campaign on Indiegogo by Saturday. Asking backers to pre-pay is a quick way to jumpstart manufacturing and attract a community of developers. The effort has exceeded its goal of raising $50,000, with more than 490 funders as of Thursday in Tokyo.

MESH already has competitors, such as LittleBits Electronics Inc. which sells more than 60 modules that link magnetically. A pack of 10, including a motor, light sensor, dimmer and LED, retails for $99.

Hagiwara never did build his alarm clock. Once he had the idea, he soon imagined a much broader range of applications.

The Sony engineer envisions a marketplace where users can sell MESH products and independent developers can suggest new modules and explore ideas for how to use them.

“Every household has a drawer with stationary, scissors and glue,” he said. “Our biggest ambition is to become one of those everyday tools that people take for granted.”