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Linux Software

Wearable PCs Under Linux 120

Posted by CmdrTaco from the its-not-science-fiction dept.
demachina writes "Xybernaut, a maker of wearable PC's featured in Slashdot a couple months ago, has added Linux support. They say Linux "provides a stable platform that works well in a network environment" and it "requires far fewer computer resources than competing operating systems and allows for increased efficiency" " This one has a wrist mounted screen among other things. I'm totally going gargoyle.
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Wearable PCs Under Linux More

Wearable PCs Under Linux

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  • I can't wait untill wearables become standard (maybe?? )!!!! I think language translation would be the most useful feature. Imagine being able to walk around in a mult-culteral area and know what everybody's saying!!!

    -andy

  • I wonder if you could make a beowulf out of people-puters.... They're very modular, have a long MTBF, and, well, enjoy the fork()ing process. Of course, killing child processes might be a bit of a problem...



  • It's the same as why WinCE is bad for portables - most OSs don't scale down. They have lots of fat that needs to be trimmed. The modular design of Linux lets you dump what you don't need and come out with a sleek, streamlined kernel.

    Down with monolithic OSs!
  • But that wouldn't be any fun, locals couldn't make fun of the foreign tourists by speaking a different language any more.

    :
  • Damn you, I was going to make the beowulf comment.

    Although I was going to say, would a beowulf cluster of these things be an orgy? or just a meeting? There are however, interfacing.

    Er, heh. Nevermind.
  • Just when I thought I had finally decided what I want for Christmas, they had to come out with something else, didn't they!

    But I think I'll pass on it. It makes you look too much like Lord Dread (pardon the spelling)...

    I think I'll wait untill they come out with something smaller.


  • Have you looked at the pictures on the site? Did you ever wonder why there are so few pictures of people actually wearing these things, and that most of those pictures are tiny? It's because people wearing this stuff look like dorks, plain and simple. (And no, I don't mean to pick on this one company -- there is plenty of hideous wearable PC stuff to go around.) If your goal is to look like the biggest dweeb alive, I congratulate you -- other than that, I don't see what your fascination with these things are, Rob. Get a freakin' PDA already. :P

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • Linux is the optimal OS for stuff like this, as was already mentioned.

    Anyway, this kind of stuff is great. I can envision going to CSE class and being able to try out code as the Prof. talks about it without carrying around a distracting laptop, and so forth. With a remote linkup (somehow in the future) you could check out your email on your wristwatch and so forth.

    Lots of possibilities, and the fact that it runs Linux now is great!

  • I still don't think that any OS available is suitable to run a wearable. There is a need for a new OS to run only for wearables. Linux and WinDoze and others currently avaiable are only suited for a desktop environment. Wearable computing presents many other variables that must be taken into consideration. The fact that it's completely portable, the viewing style, the way information is called up, etc.. --- "I am Jack's smirking revenge" Tyler Durden
  • I suppose that at first this type of stuff wil be ultra geeky, but there will come a point when it is practical for anyone to have this, and then they'll just have some people on MTV say it's cool, have the kids on Dawson's Creek wear them, and then it'll no longer be dorky, huh?

    Really, are you going to let what popular culture says is good to wear prevent you from having neat gadgets?

  • Its good that Linux is moving into new markets. Embracing Linux for wearable computers will allow makers of them to create powerful systems for far less money than, say, a Windows system. Licensing fees are irrelevant in Linux, and the hardware needed to get equivalent performance is much less. With Linux at the center of these devices, perhaps wearable computers will soon be in the price range of normal people? Military applications of a reliable, wearable computer are unreal. Camping uses are amazing too... Add a GPS system and a cell phone, and if you get lost in the woods, a quick email or IM to the local authorities, and your exact location gets through easily. It could work as a smart beacon too, not simply transmitting a signal but information about the situation as well. TO explain the full potential though would take forever. This is a great thing.

  • the BeOS has a pretty good scalability, stability, and is POSIX compliant. Could be another cool alternative to mainstream OSes...

  • Go read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.

    It contained bit characters who always had wearables on, usually gathering intel for your favorite three letter agency. They were called gargoyles.
  • Not really off-topic. It's a reference to snow crash, by neal stephenson. Gargoyles are people who have wearable computers, and who constantly collect info/intel from their surroundings. Kinda like the ultimate in wearables.

  • Re:wearable goodies!!! (Score:3)

    by c.r.o.c.o ( 123083 ) on Tuesday December 14, 1999 @08:32AM (#1465699)
    Now where would be the fun of that?!?

    I know this one time I _had_ to make a phone call from a public phone, and there was somebody inside. So I started cursing the guy in Romanian (the whole thing is happening in Toronto) because he would not come out. Well, when he finally finished talking, he comes out and replies "It's all yours!" in Romanian. I can't imagine the look on my face when I heard him...

    Now if we all had those language translators, none of it would have happened. I don't want to be deprived of he opportunity of making an ass of myself, do I?


  • OPEN SOURCE WEARABLE (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    oh, my brothers, how i drooled as i read this article. how excited i got once i finally saw the light. the next (r)evolutionary phase of the copyrighted undistributable open source natalie portman and open source drew barrymore project! imagine wearing your favorite young actress!

    "look at him! look at how cool he looks as he walks down the street wearing his copyrighted undistributable open source young actress," envious passers-by would observe!
    "open source man, how in the hell do you plan on implementing this?!" you may be asking your computer screen at this precise moment. i will explain.

    i'm sure some of you have seen "silence of the lambs." well... it has absolutely nothing at all to do with that! instead, i will use a security hole, an unsearchable web, an auction-indexer and a jon katz article!

    further details can be found on the "copyrighted undistributable wearable open source natalie portman and open source drew barrymore project" home page, which has an unsearchable, unpostable url.

    thank you.
  • "going gargoyle" means putting as many electronic toys upon your body as possible. I know the term was used in Snow Crash, but does anyone know where it originated from? In S.C.(if memory serves me) a guy hooks himself up so that everything he observes (not just sees) gets uploaded. He's called a "gargoyle."

  • *ROTFL*

    Good thing you pointed that out to the styerotypically fashion consious readers.

    Besides you wouldn't look like a dork wearing one - you'd look like a super hero!


    -Little Sister

    'Applicants for obligtory side-kick line up here'

  • Linux's gonna be big... but not on X86 (Score:4)

    by Ecyrd ( 51952 ) on Tuesday December 14, 1999 @08:36AM (#1465705)
    The main problem with wearable technology is power. It really defeats the purpose of having a computer that sits in your shirt pocket because you need a kilogram worth of batteries to run the thing for a day.

    This is the reason why most of wearcomp stuff runs on embedded CPUs, such as the Motorola Dragonball series (as used in Palm) or the ARM chips (as used in Psion and Newton), NOT X86. Xybernaut does great stuff, but so far their systems have been hampered by the fact that they insist on running Windows on their wearables, so they need hefty processing power. Not that there are many companies in the wearable business anyway...

    What Linux will offer is the ability to adapt to multiple platforms: you can do your development on your top-of-the-line Athlon system at home, then quite easily port onto your uCsimm [uclinux.org] system. I personally think that we're going to see a lot of new wearable systems based on light-weight embedded systems and uCLinux.

    BTW, for anyone who is interested, go see the International Symposium on Wearable Computing [gatech.edu] home page (you can download most of the presentations from 98 and 99 as PDF (abstracts) and RealVideo). Another good place (though still heavily under construction) is the Wearable.org [wearable.org] page. Did you know, for example, that you can harvest power from your shoes [computer.org] to power a wearable?
  • People love to piss on the WinCE (excuse me, "Windows Powered") parade, but it really is new, efficient, largely cruft-free, and malleable, even if it isn't what Palm uses, or there aren't any Dreamcast games using it yet...

    Just because it came out of MS doesn't mean it sucks. Look at the meeces, the keyboards, Excel 97, Hearts, VB, Age of Empires x, and Windows 2000. =P
  • Linux _IS_ a monolithic kernel. It is also a modular kernel. But so is Win95 (don't know about WinCE).

    The distinction is between Monolithic Kernels and MicroKernels. The difference is that Monolithic kernels handle everyhing needed _inside_ the kernel, while MicroKernels delegate certain parts of the OS (i.e. filesystems, Process Management and advanced scheduling) to some "special" processes.
    See Minix (I've seen it) or Mach.

    Actually some aspects of Linux are more alike to microkernels (flush daemon, update daemon, NFS client...), so I'd put the Linux design somewhere inbetween monolithic and microkernel, closer to the former.

    All this just to tell you that you used the wrong word :-)

  • Wearables (Score:3)

    by Miou ( 115025 ) on Tuesday December 14, 1999 @08:38AM (#1465709)
    I've been researching my own wearable for a while now, and I see two main problems. The first is that I work in an office - going entirely gargoyle isn't an option. Basically, I need something that is inconspicuous. I can walk around with a box or 3 hooked to my hip... I'm a tech, I already walk around with pounds of hardware strapped to my belt. But covering the face with an eyepiece just isn't going to happen.

    Anyway, that's not the worst problem... between a removable eyepiece and a hidden earphone w/ tts software (I have long hair, easy to hide an earphone), I think I have the unobtrusive bit down.

    The real problem is internet access. To make full use of a wearable computer, it needs to be connected to the network. I should be able to real time monitor my servers, be alerted of email, read slashdot, send email, fix my servers, post to slashdot... all while riding in the car, on the train, in the restauraunt. Cell modems are simply too expensive.

    And the current solutions aren't enough. The Palm network offers "web clipping" - which amounts to them sending you what they want you to see. Telnet? Not a chance. Sprint's wireless web service? It has possibilities, but with the metered usage they currently offer, it's not much better than a cell modem for price.

    Anyway, I doubt anyone has a solution (short of start up your own telco/ISP). However, as near as I can tell, the worst barrier to making the most of mobile computing is the communications barrier.

  • Re:New OS needed (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Not a whole new OS, just a whole new interface. Anyone wanna send me a wearable computer? I'll get started right away.
  • Do we have any real solutions to battery life on wearables? I know that there was one project where camcorder batteries were being used to power a small-drain machine and a LCD panel, but no mention of the battery-life was available. Also, I have obtained a pair of i/o Goggles, and I was wondering if this and a Corel NetWinder could feasably be used as a wearable PC-thing?

    BOB_THE_EXPLORER: "Oh look! Natives! I'll just fire up my universal translator on my wearable, and we'll be good to go. Wait? What does this little light here mean?"
    ROB_THE_SIDEKICK: "It means your batteries have run out."
    BTE: "Oh dear."
    NATIVES: "Iba-Gibba-Goo. Wop-Wop-Wop."
    (*STAB*, *STAB*, *STAB*)
    BTE: "Alas! If only I could have used my wearable, I would have been able to trade all of their food, land, and women for a few plastic beads."
    RTS: "Yes, but you still would have been ugly."

  • This could be the perfect marketing opportunity for Red Hat. "Red Hat in your red hat." If they could make this thing look a little less obtrusive, people would easily get hooked with the proper ad campaign. Once they are wearing Linux, the next stop would be their desktop as they realize it is much more stable than their Windows machine. Windows CE on your clothes? Think about the doctor bills from all the crashes.
  • Hmmm and here I kept thinking that it was refering to the Gargoyles cartoon put out by Disney.

    (As a quick FYI, I think about half the recurring characters ended up getting tech implanted in them one way or another by the end of the series... talk about a set of writers with a mean streak towards their characters . Definately not your usual Disney fair... except maybe the last season).

    Now I'm going to have to go give Snow Crash a read...


    - Reunite Gondwana-land

  • Slashdot Duped Once Again... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Uh, guys, the MA-IV has been able to function on Linux since it was first manufactured. XYBR just used the mention-Linux-in-a-PR-release-and-watch-your-stock -rise meme to spin a non-event into something to get posted at Slashdot. And you fell for it. Yep.

    OTOH, I do think it's a good stock--been a fave of mine for a while and so my bank account thanks you for the mention on Slashdot as it is already causing the stock price to rise.

  • O.K., I am ussually not all that concerned about "Big Brother" being around every corner or knowing everything about me, BUT please stop and think about what you are suggesting. With this system what we currently know as privacy would/could all but disappear. Can you imagine if they mandating the wearing of devices such as you just described. If that is what the future holds maybe I should go camping and get lost...on purpose. Just my opinion....the posible implications are a little scary.

  • What the release *should* have read (Score:3)

    by Sargent1 ( 124354 ) on Tuesday December 14, 1999 @08:43AM (#1465716)
    It's too bad press releases don't have to follow the FDA's labelling guidelines for truthful content. Otherwise, I imagine the release would have read something like this:

    --

    FAIRFAX, Va., Dec. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Xybernaut Corporation (Nasdaq: XYBR - news), the leader in wearable computing by virtue of there being so few companies in the field, today announced the occasional availability and initial sales of its Mobile Assistant® IV (MA IV(TM)) running the Linux operating system. Linux has become increasingly popular as a robust operating system and contender for the server, enterprise and Internet
    markets.

    Edward G. Newman, president and chief executive officer of Xybernaut, commented, ``We are pleased by the addition of these Linux-based systems to our product lineup. Our initial Linux sales to major companies in the automotive, shipping and aerospace industries have been -- oh, who are we kidding. The only big upside to this announcement is that we should get plenty of attention from Slashdot.'' He then added, ``Geez, I hope our servers are up to this. We don't want to end up being poster children for that stupid IBM commercial where the guy's in an AA-like meeting and talks about his web site going down.''

    Dr. Edwin Vogt, executive vice president for Xybernaut's European Operations added, ``We have successfully integrated hardware and software into a mobile device whose geekiness is unrivalled, even by the popular pocket protector.''

    --

    Sargent

  • The pictures that you will see displayed for these systems are second generation wearable computers.

    I had an opportunity several years ago to work on a first generation wearable computer project at the University of Oregon. You talk about lame! That thing was made from the guts of a notebook PC (I forget what model) stuffed into a heavy duty fishing/hunting vest, with a bulky set of virtual glasses and Dragon Dictate for voice control. Control was problematic, and the darned thing didn't even DO that much, but the department head was happy, which counted for more.

    The point is, it was lame and useless, but it served its purpose of proof of concept! That work, and similiar projects, allowed the second generation of wearable computers to be put together as something halfway useful.

    As for the next generation of wearable computers, I think that you will find that wearing one will no longer mark you as a dork or dweeb. Screen projectors will routinely be fitted into standard eyeglasses (or sunglasses, for those who are "too cool" to be a four eyed nerd). Controls will probably be by voice and or some sort of control glove that will not be too conspicuous. And noone will be able to tell you are wearing a computer unless they look real close.

    As for the advantage of a wearable system over a PDA... Well, a PDA has (at best) a 5" screen. I would imagine that the effective size of a projected screen from a wearable could be as large as desired. Can we say 32" monitor?


    Mike Eckardt [geocities.com] meckardt@spam.yahoo.com
  • I'm glad that companies realize that Windows CE is not the answer to PDAs/portable devices. On a relevant topic, about three or four months ago Linux Journal ran a story on embedded systems. It goes to show that with the modularity and portability of Linux, developing a port to the wearable computers is more feasible than anything MS can come up with. A dedicated OS for wearable computers makes sense only for a minute, resurrecting the older mentality that code has to be trashed instead of reused, and developed instead of optimized.

  • Re:wearable goodies!!! (Score:3)

    by Scott_McC ( 125344 ) on Tuesday December 14, 1999 @08:45AM (#1465719)
    I've been doing a lot of thinking about wearable PCs and I don't think language translation is the coolest app. Imagine if your lapel pin monitored everything people said to you, and then you could ask it questions like, "What did my girlfriend tell me to buy at the store?" The ultimate memory aid. It would make the "To Do List" on all those palm tops obsolete. Or combined these gizmos with ambiguous computing. Imagine your new in town and you ask you wrist watch what's the best Chinese restaurant in town? It talks to all the other wrist watches in town and see which Chinese restaurant has been do the most business. Then ask it which is the least crowded and it would see how many wrist watches were in each restaurant and report back to you. Really there are so many cool things you could do with machines like these that I could write about it all day.
  • Admit it -- you just gotta see pictures of them, right? Here you go.

    http://www.angelfire.com/sd/sdmirro r/index.html [angelfire.com]



    Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
  • This is not only funny, but painfully true. I know people that read /. for no other reason that to get stock tips. And trust me, these non-technical guys don't exactly have the comments turned on. They see a headline, occasionally a story, and then get to e-trade as fast as there little "Internet ONLY" computers will take them. Moderators, I think ya could've been a bit kinder to this one.
  • How am I supposed to read the news if you guys keep taking every server down that posts anything interesting? :p
  • Windows NT is microkernel indeed. You can see this by the message queueing, somewhat like the SysV architecture (but NT is shipped with BSOD's).
    I think a good OS should have both, for scalability and dynamical reshaping of the resouces i would advice microkernel, while a monolithical kernel tends to be more secure and also a little faster, because it doesn't have to care too much with the message overhead.
    If i'm wrong, please reply
  • Mandate wearing it? If the government wanted to track us they easily have the technology to do so already. Granted, implementing it and requiring us to carry along the tracking devices would incite a full scale rebellion of the people and wide scale mutiny among the armed forces, but wearable computers are not going to herald in a new era of monitoring. Any potential they have for that is already out there. This is nothing more than a PC that takes up less space.
  • there aren't any Dreamcast games using it yet...

    Actually, Sega Rally 2 does.. Imagine the horror I experienced when I popped the disc in and saw this image [min.net] pop up on the screen.

    I managed to crash it too, I popped the disc out while it was at the title screen and it returned me to the main dreamcast menu, and the right half of the screen flashed for like 10 seconds and then it just locked up.

    Thanks, Microsoft.

  • Is there a button on these things that automatically plays a .wav stating- "You will be assimilated!!!" The borg didn't look as foolish as these poor individuals. My condolences to them all.

  • After all this time, though, there still aren't any mobile computer accessories that are "cool" to have -- at least the PalmPilot doesn't have much stigma anymore, but people don't think, "Damn, he's got a Pilot -- I bet he gets all the chicks!" I'd be pretty surprised if MTV/Dawson's Creek/etc. ever make computers a cool thing to have around for anything but looking at porn or their respective websites.

    The Apple iBooks probably have some coolness factor, but I'm not convinced that they're really computers -- I think someone pasted a picture of a Mac desktop onto a colored toilet seat. Besides, I'll go back to the abacus before I ever use MacOS again. :P

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • If you bother going to Xybernaut's website, you find out that the base model, which is a meager (but servicable) Pentium 200 with 32MB of RAM and a 2GB hard drive is $3500 and goes up from there. That price is *not* including the Head-mounted-display, which is an additional $2000.

    Personally, I'd rather try to cobble together my own which I could probably do for about half that price.

    -=-=-=-=-

  • We have a couple of these... (Score:4)

    by Ribo99 ( 71160 ) on Tuesday December 14, 1999 @09:01AM (#1465732) Homepage Journal
    We have a couple of these in our lab. I haven't actually worked with them but the Intern who did said they were "pieces". He hated wearing them. They just aren't comforable. The keyboard that straps to your arm is useless, the harddrive/cpu runs too hot to wear comforably on your waist, the HMD is crap, extremely uncomfortable. The arm-mounted touchscreen is unreadable in sunny weather. To quote him: "Once you add together the CPU, battery, port expander, headphones, microphone, networking card, and GPS car with antenna, this unit wears on you much more then you wear it."
    It was a good idea, but IMO wearables should be much less invasive then that. Give me my Palm Pilot any day. :)

    For some commentary on the Xybernaut from Steve Mann's Cyborg crew up in the University of Toronto, look here [techreview.com].

  • Just because it came out of MS doesn't mean it sucks. Look at the meeces, the keyboards, Excel 97, Hearts, VB, Age of Empires x, and Windows 2000. =P
    Oh, I REALLY hope you're joking on this... at least on the mouse and keyboard... If you really are delusional enough to think that Micro$pend created those....
  • Judging by that blurb about being under NDA with Transmeta, it looks like xybernaut is looking into such alternatives (if rumors are correct, their "Crusoe" chip should provide x86 compatibility and performance without draining 8 batteries a minute.)
  • Definitely. People look like dorks wearing this stuff. I met Steve Mann once. He's a guy at MIT (at least, he was at MIT; I believe that he's got a position at a Canadian school; please forgive my memory lapse). Steve's been wearing a custom wearable computer of some kind for over a decade. IMHO, he is the definition of dork.

    That's what it means to "go gargoyle." A gargoyle eschews all social graces to be permanently, constantly wired. Check out Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash for the coining of the term.
  • We won't need a new OS, we need something like speech control. However, speech isn't that great irl, because you don't want to give any commands to your computer anymore in a silent room. Maybe the future computers will be connected directly with the cortex, so you only have to think to give commands.
    Think about hacking a human brain...
    Maybe this sounds kinda creepy, but isn't the computer an extention of your brain already? Dont you use the computer to store important information, which you otherwise would forget?
    Yes, it is creepy...
  • It originated in medieval times actually. Gargoyles are typically stone statues made to resemble grotesque creatures who prop up on the top of buildings and 'watch'. It was believed in those times that gargoyles would scare evil spirits away by keeping an eye on them. Neil Stephenson adapted the watcher concept and thought the word gargoyle fit appropriately.

  • Rodney Geekfreund passed away yesterday when he dodged a virtual missile in the game on his wearable, only to get hit by a non-virtual crosstown bus.

  • If you're looking for affordable internet access for your wearable, you might consider investigating CDPD (Cellular Digital Packet Data)

    CDPD is used in the Palm III's Minstrel, and the new Palm V Omnisky Minstrel [www.omnisky.com] [omnisky.com]). If I recall there are a couple of PCMCIA type II and III cards that support it as well (the Spider comes to mind)

    AT&T has 'unlimited' service for it at around $25/month for the palm $55/month for other devices in many areas (called AT&T Wireless IP Service [attws.com]) and it gives you a 19.2k TCP/IP stack.

    The service is damn near ideal for wearable/pda use, so, I wouldn't go so far as to say there are no options for internet connectivity.

  • Yeah, but it's so easy to recompile that it's for these purposes plenty modular. You can just pull support for all the things you don't need, and do a MUCH smaller build.
  • The real problem is internet access. To make full use of a wearable computer, it needs to be connected to the network. I should be able to real time monitor my servers, be alerted of email, read slashdot, send email, fix my servers, post to slashdot... all while riding in the car, on the train, in the restauraunt. Cell modems are simply too expensive

    Perhaps something like the OmniSky [omnisky.com] service currently available for Palm PDA's would be perfect for this sort of thing if the hardware issue could be worked out. Right now coverage is spotty at best outside of major cities, but it's wireless and has a fairly inexpensive flat-rate plan at $50/month. Also, Bluetooth would be perfect for wireless connectivity while wandering around the office.
  • Your comment is a little short-sighted. Have you seen any embedded devices that run linux, like the car mp3 player at empeg.com? Probably not. Saying linux is only suited for a desktop environment is like saying that internal combustion engines are only suitable for full size cars.
  • The best solution I have seen so far is almost a nonsolution. Basically, a small recharging battery pack internal to the main wearable "box," so that you can swap external battery packs without a problem. The next step is simply to have several battery packs which you strap on according to the current demand... most of us have a "home station," or a backpack, or something that we carry around/can get to throughout the day. If you have 5 x 4 hour battery packs, and you swap them in and out every 3 hours or so, you can dramatically cut down the weight in batteries actually strapped to your person. This allows you to also have a large, daylong battery pack you use in situations where you won't be able to swap battery packs.

    Granted, this is all second hand information - I'm building my wearable now, so I haven't had a chance to really figure out if this is more of a pain than what it's worth.
  • while driving thru an oil pipeline he whips out some palm device and there's a "WindowsCE" product placement, hehe. Wonder how much that one co$t 'em.

    Boojum
  • Yes, but a modular one.
  • Xybernaut has, in the past anyhow, fallen into the idea that a wearable computer is any computer that can be strapped onto your body. Take a laptop, hang it on a belt, and add a heads-up display. *poof* Wearable computer.

    What constitutes a wearable computer? Well, for one, I think that anything that makes me lose my balance is pretty well out of the running. ("Yeah, I just hang this here iMac off my hip. I walk a bit funny, but I can play Quake anywhere!") Further, traditional input methods are pretty much as waste of time.

    Obviously, voice-based input is the way that things have to go. I've never had a great deal of luck with that on any of my systems, but I recently used Jupiter, MIT's voice-based weather service. Call (1-888-573-8255) and ask it any question that you want about the weather anywhere in the US. It's really an amazing system.

    Short of that, considering the processing power that's required in order to handle voice adequately, a VR keyboard might be a good first step. A HUD could show you a keyboard, floating in the air. Small devices on the fingers (like little round bandaids, perhaps, on the backs on top knuckle) could track your finger movements so that you could type.

    Audio-based feedback, as we all have probably found, is helpful. So now we need a small device on the back of the ear(s), too.

    Glasses, headphone, fingerpads, microphone, CPU. With all of these things, you truly do *wear* your computer. Quite an assembly to get all of this on.

    Is it possible to improve on this setup? Of course. Somewhere in the middle ground between hanging a Toshiba Satellite on your belt and pulling on a computer-suit is going to be the everyman's wearable computer. And if I knew what that would be, I'd be a very rich man. :)
  • Huh? Are you implying VB doesn't suck?

  • WinCE is a modular kernel (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Actually WinCE is totally modular, the WinCE embedded toolkit allows you to design custom versions of WinCE e.g. Mips processor, no display, serial and TCP support. However it was VERY difficult to make these configurations work and the resulting kernel & modules was bloatly (compared to things like PalmOS & AmigaOS) and was a total bitch to program for. I got outta there and now I use Linux exclusively :-)
  • I still have great problems with speech recognition and the wearable. True, speech makes the wearable hundreds of times easier to use.

    But.

    What about privacy? Having to speak to your computer while anywhere other than your private office negates all the advantages of the wearable.

    One poster above mentions that he should be able to configure/control his servers using his wearable while on a bus or in a restaurant. A truely useful capability. But what if the guy sitting behind you is ease dropping on your configurations while you speak them?

    What about peoplewho whould use it to manage their investments? Or to handle business deals? Voice activated wearables will never make it in the business world unless they have physical access methods that are as easy to use as voice recognition or the good ole' keyboard.

    Time to sic the industrial designers on the problem.


  • Re:Wearables (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There's no shortage of wireless LAN products for around the office. Try this list [carleton.ca]. Outside the office, you'd really like something like a Metricom [metricom.com] Ricochet modem [metricom.com].

  • Re:WinCE Is Not suCky, Eggheads (Score:3)

    by Ian Schmidt ( 6899 ) on Tuesday December 14, 1999 @09:46AM (#1465754)
    Actually, there are a few Dreamcast games using it: Sega Rally 2, Quarterback Club, Expendable, and Incoming. Oddly, those are the only 4 titles on the system that cannot maintain a flat 60 FPS framerate. Please explain, if WinCE is so great ;-)
  • Could it be that Rob no longer needs to beg some kind soul to send him toys anymore? Wonder why.
  • xybernaut's mobile assistant's are designed around your basic PC specs. They run windows, and if you can get windows to run on a box, you can probably get linux to boot up as well without too much effort.

    And if I remember correctly, you've been able to get linux as the OS for a while now. It's just this is the first press release. Maybe their meaning of "support" is technical support as opposed to just having the OS capable of running on the box.

    On a related note, guess who's stock jumped up 15% today? (begin sarcasm) Coincidence? Good thing I bought it when in august when it was $1. I tripled my money.

  • In the Washington DC area and the SF Bay area, there's a company called Metricom [metricom.com]. They provide "always-on" Ricochet radio modems which connect to the Net via a network of low-power transceivers hung from streetlight poles. Except for the fact that they're not at all nationwide, it's not a bad system for constant connectivity.
  • I never said it was 'only' suited for a desktop environment. Don't put words in my mouth. Linux was designed for desktops and servers originally, not wearables. It could run Linux but like AC said, It needs a completely new interface. Could there be an OS better suited for wearables? It's possible, if that OS was designed for that purpose entirely. Have you seen/used a wearable computer? Probably not. I had the opportunity to use one about 3 months ago at a demonstration put on by one of the leading researchers in the field from Georgia Tech. For the applications that are possible with wearables, a new OS may be the best answer.
  • After reading some of the responses, I'm going to slightly modify my stance...

    Current wireless solutions are not enough, unless you happen to live in one of the major cities which are offering unlimited wireless access.

    Though, I must also admit that things are improving greatly. It looks like my area may be getting such access sometime in the near future (next 6 - 18 months). The spotty coverage is still less than ideal, though.

    As far as LAN wireless, those products exist and are pretty good already. My main concern was coverage while not at home or office - which is still an average of 5-6 hours a day, sometimes more.

    Anyway, thank you for the pointers... AT&T doesn't offer it here yet, but there is a chance for someone to offer it in the future!
  • I'm on a mailing list of folks who've been hacking wearable computing for quite a while now, and there's a guy by the name of Eric Laforest who's done just that, hacked a netwinder into a portable. You can probably look him up in the mail archives at http://wearables.blu.org/ [blu.org], which, btw, is a damn good source for ANY information on wearable computing.
  • (1-888-573-8255)
    doo-doo-doo, we're sorry... the phone system is slashdotted.. would you please hang up and try your call again later.
  • If Linux or any *nix variant (BSD, etc.) could be ported then of course it would be simpler. However it may be that only a brand new "from the ground-up" OS will really work. Linux still remains either graphical (i.e. point/click - KDE/GNOME) or command line; neither of which are suitable for a wearable system. Unless of course one enjoys talking to oneself all day. The bottomline is once the hardware is available new methods need to be examined. Recycling the old ones based on brand loyalty is the "shortsighted". Having tested a few designs I can conclusively say that neither voice-only nor mouse/hand controls will move this technology further. For something like this we must truly get "out of the box" ---quoth the Ranger
  • Well, the framerates are poor, probably because they haven't ported DirectX over, so they're still using GDI function calls... oh yeah, and it's gotta run the task manager, scheduler, window manager, registry massager, and surely you cannot forget that it's gotta check for an upgrade to Internet Explorer every couple of minutes. God forbid you wouldn't want to be using an obsolete web browser on your Dreamcast while trying to play a good game of football...
  • Ham radio systems have a pretty good potential for allowing data to be transfered back and forth between your wearable and your "home" base. The speed is slow but you can send tcp/ip packets over the system. Plus, ham radio's are pretty much have a global coverage. The negative thing is that the speed is pretty slow.
  • AT&T's (and OmniSky's coverage) is pretty much limited to major metropolitan areas, which is fine for my purposes. (I travel on business occasionally) The Ricochet system another poster mentioned is unfortunately pretty much a geographically limited novelty.

    I've been considering building my own Wearable for a while now. (off and on)

    I'm leaning towards something around the power level of the Palm Vx or Handspring Visor Deluxe (the Springboard port has definite possibilities) with text to speech hardware. I haven't been able to try out any of those one-handed keyboards, but I would think that a braille keyboard (6 keys plus space, used 3 per hand could be broken apart and set 3 keys to a hip (or palm) for data entry in a pinch.

    Then again maybe that onhandpc thing had the right idea in only really gearing up for data retrieval rather than data entry.

    I considered using the Qualcomm pdQ as a base for one at one point, except the pdQ has its own proprietary undocumented connector and appears that Qualcomm is going to drop support to move to a CE platform. (Also, it doesn't help that the pdQ only transfers data CDMA (14.4kbps and the only carrier in my area that supports it is Sprint, and they charge by the minute)

    Using a PDA for the heart of it would allow me to remove the 'getup' and still carry the information I want.

    My journada has too much bulk for me to consider carrying something like that as a starting point.

    I have a bunch of serial controllable LED displays that I could use for information sources

    That parachute PCMCIA adaptor for the palm might be a place to start, when they ship it atleast, but that would rule out a handspring module and it probably would require some jerrymandering to fit together with a CDPD modem in place.

    The question is then if I can fit a dual serial uart and a speech synth chip into a springboard module.

    And dangit, this still won't let me play mp3s =)

  • No, I'm not sure.

    AFAIK the distinctive point about Microkernels is that cricical subsystems (filesystems, memory management policies, process scheduling policies etc.) are handled by user-level processes.

    NT has a lot many services, its IPC setup is most impressive (I think it's because Microsoft tries to offer (N+1)-thousand way of doing things because they can't get the first N-thoudsnd right but need to support them anyways), but I haven't seen anything like "filesystem-as-a-process". From this point of view, Linux (with its nfsiod "processes") is more akin to a microkernel than NT is.

    About whether a microkernel is better than a monolithic one. Some time around 1994 there was a very famous flamewar between a certain... what's his name... oh yes. Torvalds. Linus Torvalds, and a professor Andrew Tannenbaum (or was it Tannembaum? not sure), author of the Minix OS (and of the Amoeba distributed OS, but I've never seen any reference to it but in a Tannenbaum book). The Torvalds guy argued that Microkernels are but an academics' toys, because the advantages they offer don't hold in real life(TM), or at least aren't worth the effort. Tannenbaum of course defended microkernels (he is an academic after all), in fact both Minix and Amoeba are designed as microkernels.

  • Stuff like wearable computing is perfect for opensource, and perfect for flexible, lightweight solutions, because nobody today knows what it's going to mean to "wear" a computer because nobody can imagine all the realms of possibility that open up.

    In a sense, much of what we've seen of computers today was predictable: the Dick Tracy wristwatch, Flash Gordon's viewscreen technology, etc. If the future were that simple to predict, WinCE might have been the answer.

    But what's going to make an "ultraportable" successful is going to be a surprize. The PalmPilot won in the handheld category just because it was a better product, but it's a really subtle thing to describe exactly what is better about it. Yet, hold it side by side to a WinCE device and in about 60 seconds you prefer it, despite its paucity of apps. And that kind of subtle usability attribute is really hard to predict, even for the developers. I expect [hey, it's not exactly profound] that wearables are going to have many of the same attributes, or even more. It'll be like trying on shoes: this one pinches... ahhh! this one feels comfy. Having a variety of robust, mutable opensource OS and app solutions available to play with is totally key to allowing the widest variety of Gyro Gearlooses to experiment with kooky quirky variations, but there will be a buncha cool stuff coming out the other end.

    I was thinking the other day that the automobile was invented, looking back, pretty far into the last century. But we think of them as a 20th century device. I think in 20 years computers are going to seem to have undergone as rapid an advance. Yeah, there were some primitive devices available back in '99, and in "aught one", but nothing like what's new for '19!!

    note: I'm also predicting that we'll be back to using 2 digits for years again, lickety split, but that's off-topic.

  • Now, perhaps I've been reading too many sci-fi, but could you not get around this by learning to sub-vocalize?

    The mic and the speaker for the system could be in one ear, to make the mic as unobtrusive as possible and to stop that dangly thing getting in the way. Then couldn't you essentially whisper, and the mic should be able to pick up much softer "talking" through the vibrations in the jawbone than if it had to go through air?

    Just a thought.
  • airport?
  • to the best of my knowledge, sub-vocalization requires forming certain words in certain ways... It is something that needs to be learned. And if you're going to go through the effort of learning to sub-vocalize, you might as well learn how to use one of those cording keyboards.

    Sub-vocalization is definitely the cooler of the two options though.
  • He works in the Computer Engineering department of the University of Toronto. Last year he formed his own research group called the Cyborg group. I'm one of them. I don't actually wear a wearcomp regularly because we have a limited number (of good ones), and because I'm more interested in coding for them than in figuring out what to do with them.

    Steve does have rig on him nearly all the time, but he switches wearcomps depending on what he's doing. As for being a dork, I don't see why he's any more of one than the hundreds of people who post to slashdot every day (myself included).
  • Oh, where to begin...
    • There are content restrictions on what you can send over ham radio. No encrypted data, no profanity, no nothing.
    • Your range isn't much better than line-of-sight on any band where you can get serious bandwidth. On the HF bands which do allow DX regularly, IIRC you are limited to very low speeds; it used to be 65 WPM Baudot (!), but it may be as high (yeah, high) as 4800 BPS now. You just don't have the bandwidth to play with when your entire band is only 300 KHz wide; you have to play nice and share, or else you aren't operating for long.
    • You can't do anything at all commercial.
    • Anyone can listen to your traffic.
    Ham radio, especially in the HF bands, just isn't suited for what you need for wearables.
    --
  • I can envision going to CSE class and being able to try out code as the Prof. talks about it

    Uh, no need to envision :) Check out the top picture on this [wearcam.org] web page. I was in the fall 1999 version of this course. But we havn't updated the page yet.

  • Privacy vs Opression (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Keep in mind that out of control police have been outed by the cheap affordability of the camcorder...as in the case of catching the Rodney king beating and now required on most squad cars. Consider how many unethical employers have harassed employes and attempted to violate labor laws only to get caught on pocket tape recorders. Yes, I think these personal computers can be abused by authority, I think they can also prevent abuses from authority. Imagine being accused of the crime you didn't do as a result of circumstantial evidence and an over-eager prosecutor looking for a quick conviction; going back though your personal computer logs with your attourney you could demonstate beyond a shadow of a doubt you have a record of where you were and what you were doing, confirming your alibis. Imagine a police force literally afraid not to do everything by the book, expecting that any wrong move against a citizen could be recorded and used against him in court, all of the pressure put on governments facing substantiated lawsuits to make sure the cops do not violate human rights...or else pay. Call me paranoid, but I'd like to have something recording everything I encounter to cover my ass. I have already successfully used tape-recorded conversations with two unethical managers in disputes to maintain myself from false accusations and harassment. Perhaps in the future this technology could preserve our rights and make the system more honest....just a thought. If all of this technology were unavailable to the public but could only be posessed by the government I'd be more worried.
  • He's not putting words in your mouth, YOU SAID Linux and WinDoze and others currently avaiable are only suited for a desktop environment. Then in your responding post, you said I never said it was 'only' suited for a desktop environment, which seems to me to be a direct contradiction. Think, before you type.
  • Look, everything that people seem to think is bad about linux/windows/etc... when it comes to wearables is part of the interface, NOT the underlying architecture. The linux and windows kernels have been used in various diverse embedded applications before. This doesn't mean that the engine monitor in my car is running KDE. Why throw away a perfectly good kernel?
  • The power issue is a good point, but switching CPU's only goes so far. A really powerful chip capable of serious number crunching is usually designed on the "power is irrelivant, speed is everything" model of chip design. The more transistors you pack onto the silicon, the more power your going to drain. So when it comes to wearables with real processing power, your going to need to carry along real batteries.

    Here at UofT, we have wearables based on various flavours of X86, and the strong arm, and though the strong arm is a bit more battery friendly than the equivalent X86 chips, it's not that big a difference.

    Batteries are old tech, we need to invent something better. Oh, and while we're at it, can we please hurry up with the fusion already? ;)
  • With all the object oriented toolkits, maybe people will be smart enough to make Qt/GTk/Mozilla be able to accept multiple/alterative input-output streams elegantly. Software components like menus, edit boxes and toolbars will take responsibility for these various kinds of use. I'd like to work on that kind of project.
  • Actually, as a DC games programmer, I can tell you that WinCE DC games use DirectX6, although the SDK only came out in a usable state a few months ago. WinCE may be inferior to the Sega OS, but it's draw is easy porting from Win32. That's why you see developers using it, not because of some technical advantage. I agree fully about a gaming machine not needing all the "(dis)comforts" of a desktop box. ;) -La'Choppe

  • you will like thier new super operating system called WinCE (wince).

    Just because it came out of MS doesn't mean it sucks. Look at the meeces, the keyboards, Excel 97, Hearts, VB, Age of Empires x, and Windows 2000. =P

    As long as you keep using thislogic, you will never have to worry that:

    Microsoft didnt make the keyboards. They contracted out another company to do it.

    Microsoft didnt make hearts. they just made the first freely available windows version of it. and this is of course questionable.

    they didnt make Age of Empires.. It was made by a game company outside of microsoft.

    The others stuff.. well lets just say the worthiness is questionable.

    LW

  • Until they make a MIB sungrasses for display, I ain't going to touch one of them. BTW, earpieces attach/connect to the glasses is lame, I have seen those SONY glasstorn. They should separate it,or make a skin-color wire. The best wareable is so far libretto, at least you can read it like a book. I'm hunting for some (Asian) Indian art handkerchief to decorate my libretto, enough of this technology gray-plastic modern look and feel.


    CY
    • "Your range isn't much better than line-of-sight on any band where you can get serious bandwidth. On the HF bands which do allow DX regularly, IIRC you are limited to very low speeds; it used to be 65 WPM Baudot (!), but it may be as high (yeah, high) as 4800 BPS now. You just don't have the bandwidth to play with when your entire band is only 300 KHz wide; you have to play nice and share, or else you aren't operating for long."

    Well, that's not completely true! The Bavarian Packet-Radio Group [baycom.de] develops HIGH speed modems (19k2..76k8) especially for packet radio! (BTW: Most of the current packet networks are high speed (>19k2) already!)

    The REAL problems using packet radio is:

    • Where to leave the freakin' antenna! To get at least a realiable connection, your antenna should have at least have free sight!
    • Besides that, you should have a license, something that could be solved by allowing NON-licence transmissions at special frequencies...

    Just my $0.02!

    -- Sighm (PE1RXA, for anyone who cares!)

  • Check out DEC/Compaq WRL's factoid [digital.com]

    not as much of a UI...
  • I knew that that comment would get me in trouble without some qualification. Perhaps "geek" is a better term, one of which I'm happy to be.

    My point, I suppose, is that when I saw Steve talk and subsequently had a group discussion between him and my research group at Carnegie Mellon, he seemed socially awkward simply because he was constantly either being distracted by his gear or distracting others by using his gear. Perhaps it's not a function of Steve personally; simply wearing such equipment may lower a person's capacity to interact smoothly with others.

    I would assume that your group has done research on the social implications of wearables in addition to practical design issues?

  • Here [winspect.org] is a web page describing work we have done with wearable hardware and Linux.

    It provides some information on installing Linux on MA-III and MA-IV systems by Xybernaut and getting wireless networking and audio running. It also contains some comments on wearcomp and Linux based on our experiences.

    We might start a Linux wearable HOWTO covering more aspects of wearcomp and Linux if people are interested.

  • You're right I did say that. Pardon me, I was up for 24 hours straight rebuilding a server. What I meant is that Linux and WinDoze were initially designed for desktop/server environment. Linux has had success being ported to other systems. However, that doesn't immediately make it the absolute best for wearables too. Research is needed to determine the best path for wearables. It may be in the direction of Linux and it may not.
  • Harvesting power from shoes presumes that we want to wear shoes. If we instead go barefoot as much as possible, we

    1) save energy and slave labor
    2) gain much healthier feet
    3) have an opportunity to challenge rampant prejudice

    Perhaps that rotary magnet generator would work strapped to a leg?
  • I would assume that your group has done research on the social implications of wearables in addition to practical design issues?

    Are you kidding? The group is part of the Computer Engineering discipline in the faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, U of T. Do you think the words social and implications appear in the same sentence very often around here? ;)

    Actually, I'm just kidding, for a bunch of seriously hard core geeks, we tend to spend a lot of time examining the various different ways in which a particular modification or piece of equipment might be used. But unfortunatly, we could probably do with a few more history/society/sociology credits in our academic diets.

    As is the usual case with technology, a truely thorough examination of its impact will probably have to wait until it starts having an impact. People rarely think before they invent...
  • Bah, damn html tags... :)
  • OK, now I get ya. That's sort of what I thought you meant.

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