Safer yet - don't recharge a battery you're "wearing". All of the medical equipment I've done software work on, either does NOT turn on when plugged into the wall - you plug it in to charge, then unplug to use it - OR, uses isolated converters - Otherwise you can't get certification to sell it as medical equipment! (A tiny bit of leakage current at 60 Hz through the heart is an almost ideal way to accidently kill yourself, folks; 60 Hz is IDEAL for fibrillating hearts. Quite potentially lethal.) This is why you see GCFI interrupters around every sink, nowadays, when things are wired according to code at least... (Scary thing is, I thought, "No, of course not" when I first read this post - not, if you recharge the batteries off your person, as I had already decided I'd probably do! GLAD you posted, Thad!) Mark Willis
wrote: > > >Is isolation a big concern for wearables? (*electrical* isolation ;) > > If you are running only on fused batteries, I don't think its a problem. > > The concern is when you have a potential direct path from the wall > socket to your body. Isolated converters provide a safety catch just > in case something bad happens. They are commonly used in medical > equipment and are not a bad idea in general. > > Anyone a UL inspector out there? Are they used in notebooks...hard to > tell without serious dissection. > > Thad Starner > MIT Media Laboratory > Wearable Computing Project
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