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Wearable Computing Becomes Reality (for This Guy)

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Image courtesy UMPCPortal

Image courtesy UMPCPortal

One of my  fellow kama’ainas  back home in the 808 (that’s Hawai’i to the rest of you) has put together a wearable computing rig powered by a Sony UX380N. Brian Kuriyama, who goes by the screen name Seven of Nine  fiveseven808 (your name’s on your Twitter, brah), put together this sweet system from the following components and shared his secrets with UMPCPortal.

Main system:

  • Battery geek: BG 14-18-60External battery (60wh)
  • Sony UX380N
    • VGA/TV/LAN Dongle
  • Motorola iDen i425 (for next-to-nothing (but half dial up speed) always-on internet access)

Input/Output:

  • Modified MyVu Crystal Head Mounted Display
  • Bluetooth enabled cellphone (text and mouse input)
  • Bluetooth stereo headset (voice input and stereo output)
  • ThinkOutside Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard
  • Logitech Bluetooth Mouse
  • Bluetooth Frogpad (text input)

Basically, video outputs to the MyVu, which he has mounted on his eyeglasses  like a heads-up display, and he can  input data  through multiple devices, such as text either through his ThinkOutside QWERTY keyboard or the one-handed Frogpad.  On top  of that, he’s  loaded with an extra battery pack and always-on connectivity.  Very cool stuff.

Unfortunately, his Sony UX took a turn for the worse, which is the computer in  his wearable computing rig. However, given that unit is a few years old and is outpaced by today’s netbooks, I would view this as an opportunity to upgrade. Looking forward to seeing what he picks to replace it.

8 Comments

8 Comments

  1. Benz145

    07/25/2009 at 11:35 pm

    As surprising as it may be, the UX380N is actually not outpaced by today’s netbooks. The UX is a very powerful computer, and one of the reasons that it was used over a less expensive netbook was the fact that the external dongle provides a 3.5mm jack A/V output for the MyVu headset.

  2. Sumocat

    07/26/2009 at 4:19 am

    @Benz145: I’ll defer to your experience, but even my Toshiba R25 with 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo processor feels on par with today’s standard Atom equipped netbooks.

  3. Gavin Miller

    07/26/2009 at 10:09 am

    What does his girlfriend think of his setup? ;-)

  4. semidork

    07/26/2009 at 11:11 pm

    His girlfriend thinks his setup is awesome, and is sad his UX died ._. Can’t believe the boyfriend is getting so much coverage for his side project…

  5. fiveseven808

    07/27/2009 at 6:42 am

    LOL a link from the wear-hard mailing list sent me here, and here you are XD Small internetz lololololol Does this mean you doubt my abilities??? D:

  6. fiveseven808

    07/27/2009 at 6:46 am

    @ sumocat: Either your computer is bogged down with crapware or you have some serious hardware issues. I recently got to play with a 2ghz C2D (T7300) laptop and it blows my UX away in terms of Vista usability (what the owner runs, not me). I’ve seen my UX in terms of my friend’s netbooks and my UX is still marginally faster (before it died at least). Atoms are really quite underpowered… Under my typical load, they feel like bogged down computers I’ve worked on for customers and friends!

  7. Sumocat

    07/27/2009 at 8:49 am

    @fiveseven808: My system does run several Toshiba utilities (and the tablet bits), but 2GHz T7300 should be considerably faster than my 1.6GHz T5200 (25% higher clock and more efficient) and blazingly faster than any Atom system as well. Regardless, I’ve seen Atom chug on processor-heavy tasks, like converting audio formats, but run nimbly for simpler tasks, like web browsing. Glad you could stop by to comment.

  8. semidork

    07/28/2009 at 1:36 am

    Of course not, dear. I never got to play with your UX though… makes me sad just thinking about it ._.

    Also, you agreed with me about the surprise part :P

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