Wearwulf
An Overview
Wearable computers don't have to be the reserve of the rich. If you weed out the unnecessary features and buy smart, you should be able to make a wearable for under £100. So what constititutes a wearable computer? What do you need, and what can you live without?
The »wearable computing FAQ, defines five major characteristics of wearable computers:
- Portable while operational
The most distinguishing feature of a wearable is that it can be used while walking or otherwise moving around. This distinguishes wearables from both desktop and laptop computers.
- Hands-free use
Military and industrial applications for wearables especially emphasize their hands-free aspect, and concentrate on speech input and heads-up display or voice output. Other wearables might also use chording keyboards, dials, and joysticks to minimize the tying up of a user's hands.
- Sensors
In addition to user-inputs, a wearable should have sensors for the physical environment. Such sensors might include wireless communications, GPS, cameras, or microphones.
- Attention-getting
A wearable should be able to convey information to its user even when not actively being used. For example, if your computer wants to let you know you have new email and who it's from, it should be able to communicate this information to you immediately.
- Always on
By default a wearable is always on and working, sensing, and acting. This is opposed to the normal use of pen-based "Personal Digital Assistants," which normally sit in one's pocket and are only woken up when a task needs to be done.
However, I have a difference of opinion about two of these characteristics:
- Sensors are not essential to the operation of a wearable computer. Wearwulf will not include sensors by default, but the availability of a serial port, digital io and analogue input pins, will allow for future expansion.
Wearwulf will be compact, have a head-mounted display, and be capable of connecting to a serial input device. Battery powered, it will be instantly available, and be useable without frequent battery changes. In many ways it will be closer to a personal digital assistant than a desktop or laptop PC.
Wearwulf will not use an 'off-the-shelf' operating system. Conventional operating systems and their applications are unsuitable for a wearable, and too resource hungry.
Wearwulf will use standard easy to locate parts where possible, to allow it's construction by hobbyists. The only part that may be difficult to locate is the Philips LPC2106, as these are currently only available from the larger distributers.
