> Have you actually found smart garments that include both storage and CPU > capacity, such that synchronization would be necessary? It seems to me that if you have this kind of processing capability onboard, the device itself should take care of synchronization. My target for my wearable is to have it recognize my house network and synch up automatically with my home PC. As a result, wearing the computer into/near the house synchronizes the data. Power is bigger problem. My first instinct is to agree with Vitorio Miliano and suggest inductive charging. It integrates well with its surroundings and requires minimal effort to start the charging process (put recepient near charger), so it's conceptually easy ot add to the traditional clothing process flow. However, this is all predicated on having wearable devices that you treat like clothing, washing, hanging in the closet, and so forth. Most wearables have not reached that point, so the interactions between them and their users more closely resemble the interactions between people and computers, not people and t-shirts. Part of the reason for this is that washable electronics are not quite ready for prime time. Most of the work I've seen in this area uses the fabric as an interconnect and has the electronics snap on to it. This means you have to remove the electronics before cleaning. I think the main reason for this is that conventional device pakages don't integrate well with clothing. The end result of this design is that before you can throw your wearable in the wash, you've had to remove the electronics. If you're adding another step to the process anyway, why not include the battery changing step there, and charge the batteries seperately. This takes you back to treating it like personal electronics, not clothing. I'm not saying this is an insurmountable problem, but part of the reason that there are not alot of research papers available may be that not a lot of research has been done in this area. Some work in the area: Jacket with a midi synth http://www.media.mit.edu/hyperins/levis/ LED tank top http://www.cs.colorado.edu/%7Ebuechley/projects/wearable/tank.= html Field overview & examples http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/393/part3/post.html Get conductive thread for your own research: http://members.shaw.ca/ubik/thread/order.html > If an article of clothing were to be so complex as to need its own > processing and storage, I think you'd find the answers in the clothing > itself, e.g. removable cufflinks on a shirt are power and storage, a > kerchief pocket on a jacket used for a thin film battery and flash > memory, a memory and power necklace as a required accessory for a > blouse, etc. > > And, of course, manual syncing would never be necessary: both charging > and transfers would be done inductively via your very attractive > wireless jewelry box. That also helps with the "two gadget limit" mentioned in a recent post by making the hardware a symbol of status and fashion as well as useful. --Abe _______________________________________________ Wear-Hard mailing listhttp://www.haven.org/mailman/listinfo/wear-hard
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