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Handhelds Hardware

Visor Add-Ons That Make It Wearable? 11

Posted by Cliff from the things-which-make-it-more-usable dept.
afrazer asks: "Anyone know if one could make a springboard module to easily turn the handspring visor into a wearable computer? It would have to let you plug in an input device such as a twiddler and a heads-up display of some sort. Obviously this would not be the most powerful wearable system, but good for keeping tidbits of information handy." This is a good idea! Have handheld manufacturers investigated this kind of usage in any way?
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Visor Add-Ons Which Make It Wearable? More

Visor Add-Ons Which Make It Wearable?

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  • I mean springboard is cool and all, but really, a visor is an expensive, and not all that powerfull of a solution....admitedly it would be tres cool! But a visor has alot of overhead, including an input device (the touchpad) that you wouldn't use, and a display (the lcd) that you woudln't use. At home I have some links to several companies that sell the type of parts you really want, and sell them peicemeal, I'll post them when I get home tonight. You can get a 486 on a stick (simm) pretty cheaply, and that would include ide channels serial and parallel ports. Its not just the power of the device that matters you see, but also the expandibility. A visor has three ports really, serial, ir and springboard (do the serial and ir share? or are they seperate?) Ok I'm rambling now. Anyways my point is, for $200 a visor isn't very powerfull, and doesn't have alot of ports. I promise to post the urls once I get home :)
  • ...what's so difficult about taking the visor out of your shirt (or pants) pocket and looking at it when you need tidbits of information?

    - A.P.

    --
    * CmdrTaco is an idiot.

  • There's a lot of small Single Board Computers based on x86 with Linux in them. They cost a little more than a Visor, but you have a lot more for your money if your targeted application is a wearable computer. There's many companies that sell such systems, just look in the ads section of any good electronics-oriented magazine. Here's some quick links I just found out in my Circuit Cellar: www.emacinc.com - The place for SBC-related things www.SNMC.com - PowerPC Linux embedded solution ww.t-systems.com - 386Ex with embedded Linux solutions, ready for internet www.jkmicro.comm - Small embedded 386Ex solutions www.tern.com - They sell "A-Core86" modules www.bagotronix.com - "DOS Stamps" with internet capability www.lemosint.com - They make some great RF Tx-Rx'ers to, let say, link your head visor to your main board without wire.
  • excuse me for the formating of my last post...
    It's been 2 days I've not slept and there is not
    any cofee left, so pardon me for not using the preview button!!!
  • The first step - and one of the easier thing to do - will be to mount the system for hands-free access. For Palmpads a wrist/forearm strap-on is an obvious solution. With this you can look at the display (nearly) hands-free and operate the system one-handed. In "rough" usage do not forget to mount it inside a water- and dusttight (transparent) bag.

    As Handspring's Visor already sports a (mostly unused) microphone, one could write an add-on that recognizes only a (very) few spoken commands (next, back, enter, menu) to navigate through documentation you load onto the Visor.
  • "... a wrist/forearm strap-on is an obvious solution."

    Duct tape.

  • Try turning off your heads-up display for about 8 hours a day.
  • A visor has three ports really, serial, ir and springboard (do the serial and ir share? or are they seperate?)

    Actually, it has Serial/USB, IR, and Springboard. The solution that would seem to make the most sense to me would be to use USB to talk to the thing, but since it's a USB device and not a host, that might be difficult. The IR sucks up CPU and probably can not be driven properly at the same time you use the Serial or USB, but of course the springboard is just on the system bus.

    Regardless, I agree that the visor is completely the wrong approach to wearable computing. It's slow and has very little storage. I'd be looking for something more like the biscuit PCs from Advantech [advantech.com].

  • I have no experience with any of the other companies (except that I've been considering Emac [emacinc.com]).

    I have to mention that I've had glorious problems with Tern boards, and I've been personally BS'ed by their CEO, who answered a support call.

    He claimed that the reason serial communication was unreliable at 57.6k was that the serial ports on all of my PCs (all fairly new, some Dells) were "non-standard." He claimed I was alone with that problem until later, after some hammering, he told me how a giant client (I won't say who, specifically, let's just say they're incredibly huge and R&D oriented) couldn't get it to work on 100 different computers in their lab. I doubt they had the patience for that.

    Then we had a defective board, but hooking it up voided the warranty. We couldn't know it was defective without hooking it up.

    There were many other problems, like their built-in timer functions, which were ridiculously inaccurate. A handheld stopwatch timed an 8 second delay to 5.5 seconds. I had to reimplement.

    We dumped them after thousands of dollars in replacements and ~5 months of development time.

    We went to ZWorld [zworld.com] after that. High quality, cheap boards, and an awesome development environment (Dynamic C, with realtime goodness). I reimplemented the software in a matter of weeks.

    Not to be negative, or anything. Just a warning. Tern's stuff isn't all that useful for wearable anyway. The core is usually plugged into a larger board with varying components. You can't really mix and match. ZWorld's PLCbus stuff is small and highly modular.

    I'm still thinking of trying out the Emac stuff, though.
  • Hey! You didnt post the URLs to this when you got home! :)
    I was looking forward to building my own '486 on a stick hooked on my belt' PC.
  • Check this out: http://www.halfkeyboard.com/product/index.html Featured at the most recent ComDex - you wear the visor/palm on your left wrist (software rotates the screen to lanscape) and a halfkey board on your right, with a cable (presumably) going up your arm, across your shoulders and back down. I won't explain how the half-keyboard works - check out the site. There is an app to download that remaps your keyboard so you can try it out.

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