With all the attention given to heart rate monitoring and step counting, respiratory rate monitoring is often overlooked. Smartwatches are starting to incorporate respiratory rate monitoring more and more these days. However, current devices often simply look at breaths per minute without extracting more interesting features of the respiratory waveform which could give us more insight into our bodies than breaths per minute could alone. [Davies] and his team decided they wanted to change that by making an earbud that can measure respiratory rate. Continue reading “Breathe Through Your Ears?”
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Skull Lamp Illuminates The Cyberpunk Future
Cyberpunk is full of characters with cool body mods, and [bsmachinist] has made a prosthetic eye flashlight (TikTok) that is both useful and looks futuristic. [via Reddit]
[bsmachinist] has been machining titanium prosthetic eyes for over five years now, and this latest iteration, the Skull Lamp, has a high brightness LED that he says is great for reading books at night as well as any other task you might have for a headlamp. Battery life is reported as being 20 hours, and the device is switched by passing a magnet (Instagram) near the prosthetic.
We love seeing how prosthetics have advanced in the last few years with the proliferation of advanced tools for makers. Some other interesting prosthetics we’ve covered are this DIY Socket for Prosthetics with a built-in charger and power supply and several different prosthetic projects for kids including these Heroic Prosthetics by Open Bionics, the E-Nable Alliance, and a Kid Who Designed his Own Prosthetic.
Continue reading “Skull Lamp Illuminates The Cyberpunk Future”
2022 Cyberdeck Contest: A Wrist-Worn Deck With A Hybrid Interface
You’d think that now that the 2022 Cyberdeck Contest is wrapped up, we’d stop writing about it. Sorry, but no — there were so many great entries that we just can’t help but keep focusing on them. And this wearable hybrid interface cyberdeck has a look we love so much that we can’t resist spotlighting it.
We wouldn’t go so far as to call the “hgDeck” a PipBoy, but [Igor Brkić]’s wrist-worn deck certainly bears some similarity with to the Fallout-famous terminal. In fact, the design for this one is based on his earlier hgTerm Raspberry Pi mini-laptop, which honestly would have made a great entry all by itself. But while the two version shares some similarities, the hgDeck puts a serious twist on the form factor. In the stowed configuration, the Pi Zero W puts the main display, a 3.5″ Waveshare TFT, to work using the resistive touchscreen interface. But with the flick of a finger, a motor flips the monitor up on a set of pantograph linkages, which exposes a compact Bluetooth keyboard. Another touch stows the screen and returns you to touchscreen-only operation.
There were a fair number of wrist-worn decks in the contest’s final results, and while this one didn’t win, [Igor]’s build has got to be one of the cooler designs we’ve seen, one that almost seems practical in the real world.
Continue reading “2022 Cyberdeck Contest: A Wrist-Worn Deck With A Hybrid Interface”
Big Brother Or Dumb Brother? Bus Drivers In Beijing Are Forced To Wear “Emotional Monitors”
Humans aren’t always great at respecting each other’s privacy. However, common sense says there’s a clear boundary when it comes to the thoughts in one’s own head and the feelings in one’s heart.
For bus drivers in Beijing though, it seems that’s no longer the case. These professional drivers are now being asked to wear emotional monitors while on the job, raising concerns from both legal and privacy advocates. But the devices aren’t really anything more than workout monitors, and whether they can actually make good on their Orwellian promise remains to be seen.
In Your Head, In Your Head!

When George Orwell wrote 1984, it was only 1949. However, he was able to foresee a world in which surveillance was omnipresent and inescapable. He also envsioned the concept of thoughtcrime, where simply contemplating the wrong things could get you in serious trouble with the authorities.
As we all know, Orwell was way off – these predictions didn’t become reality until well into the 2000s. In the latest horrifying development, technologies now exist that claim to be able to monitor one’s emotional state. Now, China’s transportation sector is rushing to push them on their workforces.
Long-distance bus drivers in Beijing are now being told to wear electronic wristbands when on the job. These wristbands claim to be able to capture the wearer’s emotional state, monitoring it on behalf of the employer. The scheme was the idea of the Beijing Public Transport Holding Group. The state-run organization claims the technology is intended for the safety of the public, and a trial of the wristbands began in July this year. Continue reading “Big Brother Or Dumb Brother? Bus Drivers In Beijing Are Forced To Wear “Emotional Monitors””
2022 Cyberdeck Contest: A Chorded-Keyboard Wearable Cyberdeck
Those of us who are unreformed hunt-and-peck typists are often baffled by the keyboard skills of those with more formal training. Home row? Specific fingers for specific keys? The mind boggles. And chorded keyboards? That’s straight-up witchcraft!
But, there are times when only a chorded keyboard will do, such as when you want to build a wrist-wearable cyberdeck like this one. It’s called the ComputeDeck-B3, and it comes to us from [Nate Damen], better known as someone who goes around with a TV on their head, which sort of fits with the total device immersion this cyberdeck enables.
The deck is designed to fit on the forearm in the position of function — basically, the posture your arm, wrist, and hand take on naturally when everything is relaxed. There’s a small display mounted at a good angle for viewing, but the star of the show is the keyboard. The fingers slip inside a slot to find three mechanical key switches positioned for each finger. It looks like the idea is to use the finger pad, fingertip, and fingernail to press each key, and then to press different combinations of keys to make specific characters. The thumb isn’t left out of the action; there’s a five-position “hat switch” located right where the thumb naturally falls, to add to the input possibilities. The short video below gives a tour and some background on design goals, and why this isn’t really a PipBoy.
For as much as chording isn’t our thing, we can see how this could work for input on the fly. And we have to compliment [Nate] on paying attention to ergonomics here, even though extending the fingers to press the nail buttons seems like a somewhat unnatural movement. We’d love a follow-up on this after he’s had some time to put it through its paces. Continue reading “2022 Cyberdeck Contest: A Chorded-Keyboard Wearable Cyberdeck”
The Calico Wearable Rides The Rails
If you’re feeling underwhelmed by yet another smartwatch announcement, then researchers at the University of Maryland may have just the wearable for you. Instead of just tracking your movement from one spot, Calico winds around you like a cartoon sidekick.
Using a “railway system,”(PDF) the Calico can travel around a garment to get better telemetry than if it were shackled to a wrist. By moving around the body, the robot can track exercise, teach dance moves, or take up-close heart measurements. Tracks can be magnetically linked across garments, and Calico can use different movement patterns to communicate information to the user.
This two-wheeled robot that rides the rails is built around a custom PCB with a MDBT42Q microcontroller for a brain which lets it communicate with a smartphone over Bluetooth Low Energy. Location is monitored by small magnets embedded in the silicone and plastic living hinge track, and it can use location as a way to provide “ambient visual feedback.”
The researchers even designed a friendly cover for the robot with googly eyes so that the device feels more personable. We think animated wearables could really take off since everyone loves cute animal companions, assuming they don’t fall into the uncanny valley.
If you love unusual wearables as much as we do, be sure to check out Wearable Sensors on Your Skin and the Wearable Cone of Silence.
Wearable Electronics Takes The 3D Printing Route
There was a time when a cheap 3D printer was almost certain to mean an awful kit of parts, usually a so-called “Prusa i3”, which was of course as far away in quality from the machines supplied by [Josef Průša] himself as it’s possible to get. But as Chinese manufacturers such as Creality have brought machines with some quality and relaibility into the budget space these abominations have largely been crowded out. There are still cheap 3D printers to be found though, and it’s one of these that [3D Printing Professor] has mounted on his wrist (Nitter) for the ultimate in portable manufacturing.
The Easythreed K7 is a novel take on a 3D printer that positions the device more as a child’s toy than a desktop manufacturing solution. It’s somewhat limited in its capabilities by its tiny size but by all accounts it’s a usable machine, and at around $100 USD it’s about the cheapest 3D printer for sale on the likes of AliExpress. The wearable mount is probably best described as a forearm mount rather than a wrist mount, but has provision for a battery pack and a small roll of filament. And this contraption is claimed to work, but we maybe would think before committing to a day-long print with it.
This may be the smallest wearable 3D printer we’ve shown you so far, but it’s not the first. That achievement goes to Shenzhen maker [Naomi Wu], who strapped one on her back way back in 2017.
Thanks [J. Peterson] for the tip!