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Wearable PCs Under Linux
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.
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...
-troll taker
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!
æeee!
"...going gargoyle?!"
Dunno what it means, but it has a great sound to it.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
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
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!
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
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
Really, are you going to let what popular culture says is good to wear prevent you from having neat gadgets?
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
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...
- passion
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."
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 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 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 page. Did you know, for example, that you can harvest power from your shoes 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
-troll taker
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
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.
All operating systems suck. Some just suck less than others. (and some are virtual black holes)
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."
aÍÍ©ÍÌÍ£Ì'̽ͩÌÍzÍYÌÍÌY
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.
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.
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:
/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
--
FAIRFAX, Va., Dec. 14
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 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.
windows NT is based on a microkernel arch i think
Admit it -- you just gotta see pictures of them, right? Here you go.
http://www.angelfire.com/sd/sdmirro r/index.html
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
How am I supposed to read the news if you guys keep taking every server down that posts anything interesting? :p
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.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
Personally, I'd rather try to cobble together my own which I could probably do for about half that price.
-=-=-=-=-
-=-=-=-=-
My mom's going to kick you in the face!
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.
I wear pants.
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.
CDPD is used in the Palm III's Minstrel, and the new Palm V Omnisky Minstrel [www.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 $55/month for other devices in many areas (called AT&T Wireless IP Service) and it gives you a 19.2k TCP/IP stack.
The service is damn near ideal for wearable/pda use, so, I wouldn't go so far as to say there are no options for internet connectivity.
Sanity is a sandbox. I prefer the swings.
while driving thru an oil pipeline he whips out some palm device and there's a "WindowsCE" product placement, hehe. Wonder how much that one co$t 'em.
Boojum
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I've been toying around with a similar idea myself. You see I have these 10 old 386 mini towers laying around and I figured out a way to weld the cases together and wear them on my head. I can run the unit with two truck batteries and carry my 15 monitor.
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.
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 :-)
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.
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
In the Washington DC area and the SF Bay area, there's a company called Metricom. 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.
Curiouser and curiouser...
re: "OPEN SOURCE WEARABLE (Score:-1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 14, @12:32PM EST (#23)" [contents deleted] How can I configure SlashDot so I can see *MORE* posts like this one?? this is a QUALITY troll! Can I PRE-SCORE my reply? NO! Why not??!?
OK, here's how it will work out:
Soon, wearable computers will all have high speed, full-time internet connections via cellular devices. At the same time, but probably at a slower pace, additional functions will be added to wearable PCs. We'll eventually see servo-activated exoskeletons that can read nerve impulses. Imagine just lifting up your sofa by one corner to vacuum under it! We'll also see extended-function eye-glasses that interface to the system. Then we'll be able to "zoom in" on anything and save snapshots with a twitch of a finger. At some point, surely someone will figure out a way to mount the wearer's brain to the unix filesystem, and then we'd never have to forget anything again.
Then some day a clever construction company will get these systems for all their workers, and then any architectural plan updates can be sent directly to the contractors' brains. And then someone will get the idea to set up beowulf...
-Paranoid AC
(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.
-- Adam
Bill Gates has been wearing one of those things in the /. Microsoft icon for a year or so :-)
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.
C'mon people, wearable should approach comfortable, like our clothes? That huge backpack is ridiculous. And what's up with that HUUGE wrist display? BIG DISPLAYS BELONG ON DESKTOPS YOU FOOLS! Did Dick Tracy have a P.A. on his wrist? Of fricking course not. Xybernaut needs to get their unoriginal asses in gear; make the screen smaller dumbasses, then craft an interface that works efficiently with the reduced real estate.
And, about power... remember the potato clock aunt Q sent you when you were 7? I wouldn't mind a coupla needles in my arm to power my wristtop... I'd rather get a geek piercing than carry a half pound battery I've got to recharge often.
And another thing... I don't really want a wristtop PC. Just give me a portable interface to my home 'puters and I'm happy. I don't want a fancy gui, or care what os it runs. I wouldn't do my processing locally anyway!!! Just give me a SSH terminal, monochrome block text display. That would be a zillion times more useful than a PDA. Please, would you rather pay $3k so you can surf slashdotted sites on a crappy mobile link, or much much MUCH less for a mobile text interface to your screaming twin athlons at home (which you bought with the money you saved)? Anyone who prefers the latter is commanded to stare at the [picture loading] icon until their eyes bleed... its what you say you want anyway.
I could rant on and on. And I did!
Curses on CE! Curses!
windows 2000 is an attempt to make NT4 'better', it's just as horrible as any their other windows operating systems, i haven't used winCE yet, so can't talk about that one, but i've used win3.x, win95, win98, winNT4, win2k rc2, win2k rc3 server, and win millennium, and i still prefer linux to do everything, only reason i continue using windows is because i'm not willing to fork over the money for a new scanner & printer that will work with linux, only reason my scanner & printer won't work with linux is because of the lack of standards the manufacturers used when creating them, hell, my printer won't even work with NT4 or 2000!! shows how thoughtless lexmark is
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.
This is my
--An Oldie, but a Goodie!
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.
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
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).
Michael Gentili
- He's just some guy, you know?
- 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.--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
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.
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.
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
It takes a village to run a Beowulf
zvchwk
fitaly
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www.fitaly.com
Here 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.
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?