Strapping An Apple II To Your Body

April 8, 2015 by Rick Osgood 20 Comments

Now that the Apple wristwatch is on its way, some people are clamoring with excitement and anticipation. Rather than wait around for the commercial product, Instructables user [Aleator777] decided to build his own wearable Apple watch. His is a bit different though. Rather than look sleek with all kinds of modern features, he decided to build a watch based on the 37-year-old Apple II.

The most obvious thing you’ll notice about this creation is the case. It really does look like something that would have been created in the 70’s or 80’s. The rectangular shape combined with the faded beige plastic case really sells the vintage electronic look. It’s only missing wood paneling. The case also includes the old rainbow-colored Apple logo and a huge (by today’s standards) control knob on the side. The case was designed on a computer and 3D printed. The .stl files are available in the Instructable.

This watch runs on a Teensy 3.1, so it’s a bit faster than its 1977 counterpart. The screen is a 1.8″ TFT LCD display that appears to only be using the color green. This gives the vintage monochromatic look and really sells the 70’s vibe. There is also a SOMO II sound module and speaker to allow audio feedback. The watch does tell time but unfortunately does not run BASIC. The project is open source though, so if you’re up to the challenge then by all means add some more functionality.

As silly as this project is, it really helps to show how far technology has come since the Apple II. In 1977 a wristwatch like this one would have been the stuff of science fiction. In 2015 a single person can build this at their kitchen table using parts ordered from the Internet and a 3D printer. We can’t wait to see what kinds of things people will be making in another 35 years.

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Trace Your Book Or Kindle With The FingerReader

March 17, 2015 by Theodora Fabio 16 Comments

[Roy Shilkrot] and his fellow researchers at the MIT Media Lab have developed the FingerReader, a wearable device that aids in reading text. Worn on the index finger, it receives input from print or digital text and outputs spoken words – and it does this on-the-go. The FingerReader consists of a camera and sensors that detect the text. A series of algorithms the researchers created are used along with character recognition software to create the resulting audio feedback.

There is a lot of haptic feedback built into the FingerReader. It was designed with the visually impaired as the primary user for times when Braille is not practical or simply unavailable. The FingerReader requires the wearer to make physical contact with the tip of their index finger on the print or digital screen, tracing the line. As the user does so, the FingerReader is busy calculating where lines of text begin and end, taking pictures of the words being traced, and converting it to text and then to spoken word. As the user reaches the end of a line of text or begins a new line, it vibrates to let them know. If a user’s finger begins to stray, the FingerReader can vibrate from different areas using two motors along with an audible tone to alert them and help them find their place.

The current prototype needs to be connected to a laptop, but the researchers are hoping to create a version that only needs a smartphone or tablet. The videos below show a demo of the FingerReader. For a proof-of-concept, we are very impressed. The FingerReader reads text of various fonts and sizes without a problem. While the project was designed primarily for the blind or visually impaired, the researchers acknowledge that it could be a great help to people with reading disabilities or as a learning aid for English. It could make a great on-the-go translator, too. We hope that [Roy] and his team continue working on the FingerReader. Along with the Lorm Glove, it has the potential to make a difference in many people’s lives. Considering our own lousy eyesight and family’s medical history, we’ll probably need wearable tech like this in thirty years!

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A Wearable Space Station Notifier

February 19, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 35 Comments

If you don’t live in northern Europe, Alaska, or the extreme southern part of South America, there’s a 400-ton, $150 Billion space station flying over your head several times a day. It’s the International Space Station, and it’s the most complex and expensive construction project of all time. Look up at the right time, and you can see a point of light rising in the sky, brighter than any star, darting across to the opposite horizon.

ISS-Above is a simple tool that will tell you when you’ll be able to see the ISS passing overhead next, and the creator of the project, [Liam Kennedy] has a new crowdfunding project to turn this space station notifier into a wearable. It’s called the Pulsar, and with the help of an RFduino and a real time clock, it will alert you to an upcoming station pass with a bit of wearable electronics.

Viewing the ISS at the most recent Hackaday Pasadena Meetup.

The ISS-Above is a great device to keep tabs on the six astronauts currently orbiting our globe, but if you want to see the space station rise over the horizon… well, lugging a Raspi and an HDMI monitor outside isn’t the best solution. The Pulsar is a tiny wearable board with a ring of LEDs programmed with 50 future passes of the space station. When the station is overhead, the LEDs light up, and a bright object appears over the western horizon.

[Liam] brought his Pulsar to the most recent Hackaday Pasadena meetup, and as his wearable LEDs lit up, the ISS appeared right on cue. The evening was only tainted by a crazy lady who decided to argue the existence of the International Space Station.

Video below.

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Hat-Mounted Clock Requires Mirror For Wearer To Tell Time

February 14, 2015 by Rich Bremer 13 Comments

[gfish] was planning on attending Burning Man and wanted to make something unique (and useful) to wear. He decided on a hat/clock hybrid. Just slapping a clock on a hat would be too easy, though. [gfish] wanted his hat to change time zones both via manual switches or physical location.

On the front of the hat there are 2 hands, as most clocks have. Each one is attached to one of two concentric shafts that run to the back of the hat. Each hand is individually controlled by an RC vehicle servo. Those of you familiar with RC servos know that a servos’ max rotation is about 180 degrees and is certainly not enough for a full revolution required by the clock. To fix this, there is a 3:1 gear set that allows a 120 degree rotation of the servo to move the clock hand a full 360 degrees. With this method, each hand can’t move past 12 and instead has to quickly move counter-clockwise to get where it needs to be in order to again start its journey around the clock face.

Mounted inside the hat there is an Arduino that controls the clock, a GPS shield to determine location and an RTC to maintain accurate time. Mounted on the side of the hat is a control panel that contains an overall on/off switch as well as a rotary switch for selecting a specific timezone or for engaging GPS mode. The whole thing is powered by a 9 volt battery.

If you like unnecessarily complicated top hats, check out this WiFi enabled message displaying one.

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An OLED Ring For Bluetooth Notifications

December 24, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 27 Comments

Wearables are the next frontier of amateur electronics, and [Kevin]’s Arduboy ring (link dead, try Internet Archive) is one of the best examples we’ve seen yet.

Inside the Arduboy is an nRF51822 – a chipset with Bluetooth Low Energy, an ARM Cortex M0,256k of Flash, and 16k of RAM. There’s also a an OLED and a touch button for displaying notifications from a phone, with the ability to reply to these notifications.

The enclosure for the ring is rather interesting. It’s a bit thick, but that’s for a reason – there’s a 40mAh battery stuffed along the sides of the ring. The enclosure itself is 3D printed to spec, and contrary to some beliefs, there’s nothing wrong with bending a LiPo cell once. Sure, it only has four hours of battery life with the display on, but it has a 24 hour battery life in standby mode, making it almost useful as an everyday wearable.

This is [Kevin]’s second wearable, the first being the Ardubracelet, an extremely interesting OLED bracelet with three different displays. The Arduboy is much more compact and comes extremely close to looking like a product. You can check out the video of it below.

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Making MicroView Wordy

December 12, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 6 Comments

Despite the MicroView shipping a ton of units, we haven’t seen many projects using this tiny Arduino and OLED display in a project. Never fear, because embedded systems engineer, podcaster, and Hackaday Prize judge [Elecia White] is here with a wearable build for this very small, very cool device.

The size and shape of the MicroView just cried out to be made into a ring, and for that, [Elicia] is using air-drying bendy polymer clay. To attach the clay to the MicroView, [Elecia] put some female headers in a breadboard, and molded the clay over them into a ring shape. It works, and although [Elecia] didn’t do anything too tricky with the headers and clay, there are some interesting things you could do running wires through the clay.

What does this ring do? It’s a Magic 8 Ball, a game of Pong controlled by an accelerometer, a word-of-the-day thing (with definitions), all stuffed into a ~~brass~~ silicon, OLED, and clay knuckle. Video below.

If you’re wondering, Turbillion (n). A whirl; a vortex.

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