I agree, I thought the whole point of the competition was “To connect something you love to the N900″ So far these seem like fairly poor examples, some don’t connect anything to the N900.

There was one submission I hoped would do well, and seemed popular in the forum – the Etch-A-Txt, that actually followed the brief and would be cool to see. Check out the entry by Pinter75 here http://tinyurl.com/yg9ls76 Not ground breaking but at least it connected something to the N900.

Oh well I really want to see the feasibility of a N900 in orbit…. yawn.

@Hackius

So, without seeing any of the project documentation on what some of these are you feel superior enough to judge them all?

Wow.

As one of the winning team members I bow at how much more you obviously understand my project than I do. Apparently custom built bluetooth hardware and software is not enough for your approval… I must not really give a crap at all.

Haptastic.

Lame name, but I’m a build geek not a marketing geek. :P

As soon as the project blogs go up it will be out there, and I’ll happily post a link. Shouldn’t be long.

We’re combining GPS, compass and accelerometers, proximity sensing and a few other things and translating it into intelligible haptic feedback through a series of vibe transducers. We’re using a few unusual materials, but mostly because they’re things we have on hand or things we’ve been wanting to work with.

The software is where the heavy lifting is. The plan is to make it extentable and hackable and affordable.

@hackius:

Credit where it’s due: The original idea comes from the University of Osnabrück. That link is to an arduino-based rebuild.

That’s one of my favorite gadgets, and in fact the first thing I ever used an electronic compass for. It’s a great design and I recommend it as a really fun introduction to haptic gadgetry.

Really it’s the inspiration (well technically the article from Wired was, because that’s where I first saw it) for my contribution to our team. I was looking at it and thought “What if this could do more than just point north?”

So, to answer your question? Everything except the ‘mounting motors on a belt’ part.

Naive: Thinking the employers and/or industry innovate technologies for reasons other than marketing.

Skateboarding sounds fun and market friendly, practical utilities don’t.