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  Welcome back! Greg Pfeil <greg@technomadic.org> - 2025-02-22 18:13 -0500
    Re: Welcome back! John <john@building-m.simplistic-anti-spam-measure.net> - 2025-02-24 16:44 -0500
      Re: Welcome back! Greg Pfeil <greg@technomadic.org> - 2025-06-12 15:55 -0400

#1 — Welcome back!

comp.sys.wearables has risen from the dead.

My name is Greg Pfeil, and I was one of the CSW moderators back in the
day. With much help from the Usenet Big-8 Management Board
(https://big-8.org), this group (along with many others) is alive once
again.

In the 16 years since the last post to this group, wearable computing
has rapidly moved forward. Everything from smart watches,
heads-up displays, and of course, the pocket-sized devices that are so
much more powerful than the PC/104 half-cube I built in my dorm room
decades ago.

But what exists outside of those spaces? What has the mainsteam industry
overlooked or gotten wrong? What wild thing have you built to address
some need that isn’t being satisfied elsewhere? Please share it here.

Also note that this group is moderated, but anything even tangentially
relevant is accepted, so long as posters abide by the Contributor
Covenant
(https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/2/1/code_of_conduct/). The
last version of the posting guidelines (from over 20 years ago) can
still be found at
https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.wearables/c/1ft995kLzXg. Please
follow them for the time being, but feel free to bring it up to me or
the group if you feel any of it should be updated.

Thanks, and welcome!

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#3

Greg Pfeil <greg@technomadic.org> writes:

> comp.sys.wearables has risen from the dead.
>
> My name is Greg Pfeil, and I was one of the CSW moderators back in the
> day. With much help from the Usenet Big-8 Management Board
> (https://big-8.org), this group (along with many others) is alive once
> again.

Nice! I'm going to take partial credit for this, as I had emailed the
Big-8 MB some time back about finding a new moderator. Glad we got you
back, instead!

> In the 16 years since the last post to this group, wearable computing
> has rapidly moved forward. Everything from smart watches,
> heads-up displays, and of course, the pocket-sized devices that are so
> much more powerful than the PC/104 half-cube I built in my dorm room
> decades ago.
>
> But what exists outside of those spaces? What has the mainsteam industry
> overlooked or gotten wrong? What wild thing have you built to address
> some need that isn’t being satisfied elsewhere? Please share it here.

There was an episode of Scientific American Frontiers years back which
showed Steve Mann's students using their wearables (wired Twiddlers,
hacked camcorder viewfinders) and it made an impression on my youthful
brain, but it's only recently that all the right tech has been available
off the shelf.

I've been fiddling on and off over the last year or so with a very
traditional wearable computer: head-mounted monocular display, Twiddler
3 chording keyset, Raspberry Pi 4 running on battery power. The whole
thing is woven through a cheap vest, with the battery in one pocket, Pi
in another pocket, cables run through the lining, etc.

In this time I've seen a big surge in wearables *without* a display
component. Cameras and voice commands are the big thing
now. Acknowledging the value of having both hands free, I've implemented
some basic voice control in my own wearable using Numen
(https://git.sr.ht/~geb/numen) and a set of Bluetooth earbuds, and for
some things it has definite advantages. As for cameras, I've found it
challenging to find anything suitable for use with a Pi. I'd really like
something that can clip to my lapel with Bluetooth control, but haven't
found anything.

I've also experimented with the Brillian Labs Monocle, and found it too
limited to be of much use -- pathetic battery life, overly-obtrusive
physical design, lame camera, tiny display. Their new Frame looks a
little more interesting, but they've gone very heavily down the AI road
and it's just not that interesting to me.


john

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#4

John <john@building-m.simplistic-anti-spam-measure.net> writes:

> Nice! I'm going to take partial credit for this, as I had emailed the
> Big-8 MB some time back about finding a new moderator. Glad we got you
> back, instead!

Oh, you definitely get credit! You are presumably the person they
mentioned when they reached out to me.

> There was an episode of Scientific American Frontiers years back which
> showed Steve Mann's students using their wearables (wired Twiddlers,
> hacked camcorder viewfinders) and it made an impression on my youthful
> brain, but it's only recently that all the right tech has been available
> off the shelf.

Yeah, it was a pain to do any of this back in the day. Reading data
sheets without much context, ordering things, waiting, hoping you could
get them to work the way you wanted … all of those steps seem at least
way faster now.

> I've been fiddling on and off over the last year or so with a very
> traditional wearable computer: head-mounted monocular display, Twiddler
> 3 chording keyset, Raspberry Pi 4 running on battery power. The whole
> thing is woven through a cheap vest, with the battery in one pocket, Pi
> in another pocket, cables run through the lining, etc.

I haven’t had a non-mass-produced wearable in forever. I would love to
put one together again … and yeah, a Raspberry Pi would be much nicer to carry
than the PC/104 half-cube I used to have.

> In this time I've seen a big surge in wearables *without* a display
> component. Cameras and voice commands are the big thing
> now.

Something discussed in the heyday of this group was single motor-unit
input devices. E.g., training conscious control of say a dozen
individual motor neurons, and then using surface electrodes to read them
as a hands- and voice-free input device. I explored that path a bit, but
kept hoping some company would just get around to it. AFAIK, it never happened.

Glad to see you here, John, and sorry it took me so long to reply … I
had a minor PGP configuration issue that prevented me from posting and
just took a while for that to get to the top of my stack.

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