Wearable Computer Links

Wearable Computer Links
(If you have any additions or corrections, please send them to Bryan Andersen)

Wearables Clubs and Groups

Local Area Clubs

Local Twin Cities Borg Group has been meeting regulairly sence Feb 2000. EMail Bryan or Brian for more information.
Regional Groups (www.extremecomputing.com/xcom/regusgroup.html).

EDU/Research Based

UMass Wearable Computing Group (www-anw.cs.umass.edu/wearables).
Stanford Wearable Computing Lab (wearables.stanford.edu).

HOWTOs and Information Sites

Wearable Computing Page (wearables.essex.ac.uk).
Wearable-HOWTO (infonomade.linuxfr.org/wearables/doc/Wearable-HOWTO/en/Wearable-HOWTO.html).
University of Toronto (wearcam.org/wearhow/index.htm).
Wearables Central (wearables.blu.org).

Fashion

InfoCharms (www.infocharms.com) did a high tech fashion show (*/showpix/show/intro.html).
Exhibit at List Visual Arts Center, 1997 (wearcam.org/lvac/).

Wearables in use and uses of them

Shooting Back, 1995 by Steve Mann (wearcam.org/shootingback.html).

Research

Computer, TOC, 1997 (wearcam.org/ieeecomputer/).

Future products

IBM Wearable demonstrated (www.ibm.com/news/ls/1998/09/jp_3.phtml) & (www.atip.or.jp/WEAR/slides/kamijoh).

Misc. Parts Suppliers

Extreme Computing (www.extremecomputing.com).

Keyboards

PIC-Key chorded keyboard (mudlist.eorbit.net/~adam/pickey/ ). This is a home buildable chorded keyboard that uses a PPIC microcontroller and outputs standard PS2 keyboard and mouse signals.

Micro Displays for Head Mounting

MicroDisplay (www.microdisplay.com).
MicroOptical Heads Up displays (www.microopticalcorp.com). Currently only available to OEMs and limited resolution.
TekGear (www.tekgear.ca).
Liteye microdisplays (www.liteye.com).
SVGA Sony Glastron from Computer Graphics Systems Development Corp. (www.cgsd.com). Price for LDI-100B is $2095 (12/31/99), Provides 800x600 SVGA.
Colorado MicroDisplay, Inc. (www.comicro.com).
Kopin micro displays, field sequential color, QVGA, VGA, and TN type SXGA, (www.kopin.com/html/320_color.html).
Planar (www.planar.com/pam/components.htm).
Displaytech, Inc. (www.displaytech.com).
inViso (www.inviso.com/contact.html).
DisplayWear Inc. (www.displaywear.com).

Digital Video Links

Divio DV Encoder/decoder chips (www.divio.com).
Linux Media Labs LML33 Board Motion-JPEG (linuxmedialabs.com/lml33doc.html).
IBM Single Chip MPEG-2 Encoder Family (www.chips.ibm.com/micronews/vol4_no2/mpeg2.html).
PC-104 supplier (www.omnipro.net/pages/embedded/Selection_Guide.html).

Video Cameras

Stark Electronics has a Color Bullet Camera, V-2214, $160, 320Lines, (www.starkelectronic.com/v22141.htm).
Channel Vision Bullet Camera, $260, 380 Lines (www.gohts.com/video/camc.html#6005).
Omni Vision CMOS Imaging chips (www.ovt.com).
VideumCam Traveler (www.winnov.com/products/vidcamtraveler.htm ), a Video camera made to be hooked VIA a PCMCIA interface to a laptop. Does 640x480 still images or up to 320x240 at 30fps. Has Linux drivers (millennium.diads.com/bdirks/winnov.htm).

Single board computers

ARM Bassed

LART (www.aleph1.co.uk/armlinux/index.html).

X86 Bassed
Uncatorgized

Cell Computing Card PCs support Linux (www.cellcomputing.com/third/prodpacindex.html).
Inova ICP-K6 has a FireWire interface (www.inova-computers.com/icpk6.html).
Advanced Digital Logic, Inc. MSM486SV (www.adlogic-pc104.com/msm486sv.html#top).
Compulab 486CORE Module, uses base module to provide VGA (www.compulab.co.il/486core.htm).
HiTeck 486PC, good looking, needs PCMCIA (www.hitex-automation.com/ehico486.htm).
Advance Micro Peripherals has some interesting low power Pentium systems (www.ampltd.com). Full multimedia single board computers. See the Mobile786EBX, Mobile786CLX. Unfortunately they are larger than is really useable in a wearable.
CompuLab 486Core Module, Tiny embedded PC (www.compulab.co.il/486core.htm).
Advantech (www.advantech.com/products/sbc/pcm-5820.htm).
DSP Design Products (www.dspdesign.com/pc104.htm), Cyrix MediaGXm 300MHz. Interesting, but does Linux work on it?
StronARM based Development Board (developer.intel.com/design/strong/quicklist/eval-plat/sa-1110.htm). Very feature rich. Supposed to include Linux support.
Chalice Technology Ltd. (www.chaltech.com). has a StronARM based system. Currently to large, but in the future a small one is planned.
Epson/SMOS Card PCs (www.smos.com/products/cardprods/cardproducts.htm).

Integrated Micro processors

STPC (us.st.com/stonline/stpc/index.htm).
ZF MicroSystems (www.zfmicro.com/MachZ.htm). Has a digital video input port.

Linux Video Support

LiViD (linuxvideo.org).
BTTV, Brooktree based frame grabber support (www.metzlerbros.de/bttv.html).
Building Number Three (Video4Linux) (roadrunner.swansea.uk.linux.org/v4l.shtml).
Matrox Marvel (www.cs.brandeis.edu/~eddie/mga4linux).
Matrox Meteor, NOT Meteor II (ftp.rwii.com/pub/linux/system/Meteor/meteorman.html).
Video for Linux Two (http://millennium.diads.com/bdirks/v4l2.htm), lots of good links.
Video and Frame Grabbers for Linux (atlantek.com.au/USERS/wes/linux/frame.html).

Hard Disks for notebooks

IBM Travelstar (www.storage.ibm.com/hardsoft/diskdrdl/prod/travelstar.htm).

Battery Packs

IDX NiCd, NiMH, Lithium Ion battery packs and chargers (www.idxtek.com/products.html).
Anton Bauer battery packs, 100Wh @ 14.4V, 5-5/16" x 4-1/2" x 3-3/4", 5.6 lbs (13.4 x 11.4 x 8.6 cm, 2.5 kg) (www.antonbauer.com/catalog/cat_bat_gold.html). These batteries use a special mounting bracket for direct connection to a video camera. It would be possible to make a mounting plate for wearable use.

Battery Information

Panasonic Li-Ion (www.panasonic.com/industrial_oem/battery/battery_oem/chem/lithion/lithion.htm).
Sanyo Li-Ion (www.sanyobatteries.net/Lithium-ion1.html).
Sanyo NiMH (www.sanyobatteries.net/nimh1.html), very high capacity NiMH batteries.
Sanyo NiCd (www.sanyobatteries.net/cadnica.html).

Power circuits, chips, and Information

MIT notes (lcs.www.media.mit.edu/projects/wearables/energy.html).
Maxim (www.maxim-ic.com) has many power supply and battery charger chips. Many have evaluation boards for them. For the person who doesn't what to build their own boards, this is a possibility. They aren't as compact as possible, but generally are in useable sizes. I use one of their universal charger boards for smart temperature ended charging of NiCds and NiMH batteries. It will do 2 to 12 cells. All I had to do was change a resistor on it so I could charge at a lower current than the setup 2 Amps.
TI Li-Ion battery pack controller PCB (www.ti.com/sc/docs/products/analog/bq2148.html).
Xicor X3100 Li-Ion Battery controller (www.xicor.com/product_summaries/x3100_summary.html). This seams like an interesting product. It better charges a pack by charging all the cells optimally. This reduces the need for matching cell resistances. There is a development kit for 3-4 cell packs. It is designed to work in conjunction with a MCU with a 10 bit ADC. (www.xicor.com/products_battery_mgmt.html).
Dallas Semiconductor (www.dalsemi.com/News_Center/Press_Releases/1998/pr2437.html).

LED Displays

HP 4-8 Character Integrated LED displays (www.semiconductor.agilent.com/led/intdisplays.html). Good for status indicators on things like battery packs. These are fully intelligent displays that do their own scanning, etc. You just tell them what characters to display.

Networking

WLAN information found from a previous exploration for robotics use.

Applications

Mapping

GMAP (academy.cas.cz/~gis/) handles US street map.
Map Data

PCL Map Collection (www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/PCL/Map_collection/Map_collection.html).
GIS Data Depot (www.gisdatadepot.com).

Speech Recognition

CMU Sphinx (www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/speech/). Open Source (BSD License) and small foot print. Source at Source Forge (sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=1904).
IBM has ViaVoice which is in Beta for Linux. Got to (www.ibm.com) and search on "ViaVoice".

Notes software, Java (wearables.essex.ac.uk/sulawesi/development.html#io).

PCMCIA Sound under Linux

CAC Bullet II DSP (www.cacdsp.com/products/bulletdsp.html). This is the only supported PCMCIA card for Linux, and it costs $1k. It's supported under 2.0.X kernels now, a project is porting it's drivers for 2.2.X kernels for speech recognition. FOr wearable use it may draw to much power. Currently 0.8W inactive, and 2.66W doing a FFT on 48kHz audio input. It is stereo in and out.

Standards Bodies

PC-104 and PC104-Plus (www.pc104.org).
PCI SIG (www.pcisig.com) (PCI, PCI-X Mini-PCI, Small PCI, plus others). Small PCI has the greatest interest to me in that it provides an already existing standard that provides for PCMCIA sized cards, but they are designed for internal use and are not hot swapable.
Wearable Board Standard (softail.visi.com/WearAble/Wearable_Board_Standard.html).

Marconi (gateway.marconi.ca/Docs/CMC/Components/allstar.html).

Misc.

VR Hardware Links (web3d.miningco.com/compute/web3d/msubvrhard.htm).
Haptics Community Links (haptic.mech.nwu.edu/links).
Sarcos (www.sarcos.com/interfacprod.html).

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