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Re: Curiosity will hopefully not kill the cat

cost?? my first wearable with twiddler,M1 hmd and computer core mounted to
my hip in a 8 inch by 6 inch by 3 inch brick cost me 698.00USD  the M1 was
450.00, the twiddler wat 78.00 and the computer was a pile of scrounged
parts like a 386dx40 motherboard that was sub-baby sized, and finding
adapter cards that were 2.5" tall or less.

Actually this is my current wearable... I havent gotten the ampro boards
assembled the way I want them yet.. there's gotta be a way to get this
smaller....

So a wearable can be dirt cheap and still have most of the features that a
wearable is typical for having.

as for an HMD...  cheapest commercially made one is the M1 and is the onty
thing that is affordable period. if you want to roll your own I would buy a
camcorder used and hack it's viewfinder for cheap-cheap but has a high
complexity depending on the camcorder. otherwise expect to pay $2K for your
display minimum.(anything with 640x480 or better)

as for being a high-school student...  start rummaging at computer and
ham-radio swap meets.  try and buy old obsolete equipment or get it given to
you...

-----Original Message-----
From: Danny Silverman <>
To:  <>
Date: Sunday, May 23, 1999 3:57 PM
Subject: Re: Curiosity will hopefully not kill the cat

>> 1. How much will it cost to build a wearable?
>Varies - it's however much you want to spend.  I myself haven't finished
>mine yet, so I'm not really sure.  A good price point is probably $2000 -
am
>I right guys?
>> 2. What kind of display gives a good compromise between cost and
resolution?
>A list of a whole bunch of displays and reviews is available at
>http://genesis.eecg.toronto.edu/head-mounted-displays.html
>The only problem I see - most of them aren't for sale, are very hard to
>find, and don't have any prices listed.  Hey Professor Mann, do you have
any
>current advice on displays for those of us trying to find one for a new
>wearable?  Everything either seems to be "in development," really expensive
>($4000?  that's more than a computer!) or no longer being made.  I really
>don't have the engineering experience to make my own HMD - where can I find
>one?
>> 3. What's the most common input device for wearables, and how does it
work?
>The best input device is the Twiddler by Handykey (http://www.handykey.com)
>$199  It is a 1 handed chording keyboard, really cool!
>> 4. Aren't hard drives kind of ... expensive? ;)
>Hard drives are probably one of the cheaper components of wearables.  The
>PC/104 boards and power supplies and NTSC to VGA converters and batteries
>and HMDs and Twiddlers etc. all cost more.
>
>BTW, I appreciate any advice I can get as a high-school student with no
>engineering background trying to make one of these things.  Any one who has
>some extra time on their hands - prices and contact info for vendors is
most
>appreciated.
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>    "To live is to suffer.  To survive, well, that's to find
>                meaning in the suffering." - DHX
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
> Danny Silverman             |   Terrestrial Concepts Web Design
>          |        http://connections.dhs.org
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
> Southern California, United States of America, Earth, Milky Way
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>----------
>>From: "Thor Harald Johansen" <>
>>To: <>
>>Subject: Curiosity will hopefully not kill the cat
>>Date: Sat, May 22, 1999, 2:37 AM
>>
>
>> Hi!
>>
>> I saw this TV program about wearable computers, and I got interested. A
time
>> after I saw it, I decided to build a hand-held keyboard. I found out
about
>> some signal pins on the paralell port, and I thought: "Why can't I just
run
>> one of the output pins through five keys from a broken keyboard, and back
to
>> those signal pins, then code a program to read'em?". Well, I did so,
without
>> any real good equipment. The "paddle" was created with a aliminium foil
>> core, a roll of tape, five key switches, a soldering iron, and a few
wires
>> from a Nintendo paddle I had lying around. I was able to write things
with
>> the keyboard, using binary combinations, where one finger was one bit,
but
>> the human anatomy makes it difficult to do certain combinations, so the
>> project was technically successful, but not practically.
>>
>> Some time later I had forgotten all about my little "invention", when I
read
>> an article about new user interfaces, and that desktop environments may
not
>> be future of computers. The article was interesting, and I found a few
links
>> to MIT pages about wearables, and I got my interest back. I've been
>> searching around the net for more information, but it seems that most of
it
>> is outdated. I've heard about PC/104, WearComp ++, but I'm unsure of a
few
>> things:
>>
>> 1. How much will it cost to build a wearable?
>> 2. What kind of display gives a good compromise between cost and
resolution?
>> 3. What's the most common input device for wearables, and how does it
work?
>> 4. Aren't hard drives kind of ... expensive? ;)
>>
>> Well, that's all I have to ask for this time. I hope someone will be able
to
>> answer. :)
>> --
>> Thor Harald Johansen
>> 
>>
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>
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>

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