5 ms·

Thanks for your interest. Yes, this is mind-blowing that you can do this today with affordable off-the-shelf devices. I did this after reading https://www.thev

Thanks for your interest. Yes, this is mind-blowing that you can do this today with affordable off-the-shelf devices. I did this after reading https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/circuitbreaker/2017/7/27/16035508/diy-wearable-computer-google-glass-raspberry-pi-instructions https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/circuitbreaker/2017/7/... Use-case... Original idea was to do whatever I like to do on my Linux laptops, carrying less weight on the go. I try it out on different things, like working on my calendar in web UI, writing a diary, being on Slack and Jabber, navigating with maps app (Marble), watching conference talks... I expect it will be pretty good for terminal apps like vim and mutt, but unfortunately I haven't found time to try out working with mail this way yet, and I am still slowly getting better at speed typing on the Twiddler, so I haven't wrote much text. By the way, there are great opportunities for text to speech and speech to text applications, just use a bluetooth earpiece. It is a nice ultra-portable general purpose computer, but I haven't found a strong "killer app" where such configuration beats both laptop and a smartphone. But I'm still exploring what I can do with it. One solid usecase for carrying RPi0W on me or in my backpack is getting calendar events notifications to my MiBand3. But this doesn't involve keyboard and HMD. There are constraints of all sorts - RPi performance, limited clearly visible area, level of brightness is not adaptable (unusable in darkness and in bright sunlight). It's hard to use this stuff, but it's fun to learn and master it. I hope this kind of computing grows its niche and we see new generations of hardware and software with this usecase in mind.

floren 7y ago
It's pretty neat what you can do these days off-the-shelf. I've got a Twiddler 3 although I haven't used it much. The Vufine looks like quite a display for $200 compared to what you could get 10 years ago (when I last played with wearable computing). I vacillate between wanting a wearable computer and wanting absolutely nothing to do with a wearable computer. In my most optimistic moments, I envision a useful note-taking device and (given a camera) a way to document interesting things. In my less optimistic moods, I consider how I already waste so much time reading bullshit on my phone! I think the best way to do it would be to script up particular activities (take a picture and tag it, make a text / dictated note, refer to a wikipedia article) and make those easy, while making it as hard as possible to bring up Firefox :) How often do you wear it?
- andrey_utkin 7y ago
  It's pretty much impossible to waste time reading bullshit on Vufine. Focusing on the display and moving the eyeball takes some effort. So it's tiresome to read on it for long time uninterrupted. But it is good for occasional glancing. Basically, it is a bad fit for content consumption (watching optimised videos from local disk is ok experience, tho), but is promising for other uses including writing text. Which is compelling to many HN people! I use it as rarely as 1-2 times a week, just so I explore the possibilities and practice a bit. Not much time to work on perfecting wearable workflows, but I have some plans.
  - floren 7y ago
    Interesting, I'm rather glad to hear the Vufine isn't suitable for reddit/youtube/other bullshit! Makes me more likely to buy one :) One more quick question, what do you use to power the RPi and the display? USB power bank?
    - andrey_utkin 7y ago
      Yes. Look for one which sustains stable uninterrupted power output during charging and charger plugging and unplugging.
neilv 7y ago
A correction to those The Verge articles: the Remembrance Agent was actually by Bradley Rhodes, not Thad Starner. It's interesting that people are still using Twiddlers. At the time that Starner, Rhodes, and others at MIT were first experimenting with what happens when computer technology is always head-up, a typical kit was a Twiddler, Private Eye (mounted on eyeglasses/goggles or hat), and a computer that was hefty by today's standards. Steve Mann had some earlier, unique gear. Rhodes had the hefty computer in a soft cube-shaped shoulder bag that looked like maybe it was a insulated lunchbox, with cables/tubes coming out of it, and going into clothing. He said it took a while to learn that some people were afraid to ask about it or say anything, because they thought it was a medical device. It's great that the computer part can now be done with a tiny $5 Raspi0w. Or with smartphone hardware. (For the smartphone, preferably reflashed with PostmarketOS GNU/Linux, and adding HUD and some kind of discreet command input. Maybe you could do the input with finger on smartphone touchscreen in your pocket, and then you only need to add a HUD on BT/USB. Maybe more battery.)

floren 7y ago

It's pretty neat what you can do these days off-the-shelf. I've got a Twiddler 3 although I haven't used it much. The Vufine looks like quite a display for $200 compared to what you could get 10 years ago (when I last played with wearable computing). I vacillate between wanting a wearable computer and wanting absolutely nothing to do with a wearable computer. In my most optimistic moments, I envision a useful note-taking device and (given a camera) a way to document interesting things. In my less optimistic moods, I consider how I already waste so much time reading bullshit on my phone! I think the best way to do it would be to script up particular activities (take a picture and tag it, make a text / dictated note, refer to a wikipedia article) and make those easy, while making it as hard as possible to bring up Firefox :) How often do you wear it?

andrey_utkin 7y ago
It's pretty much impossible to waste time reading bullshit on Vufine. Focusing on the display and moving the eyeball takes some effort. So it's tiresome to read on it for long time uninterrupted. But it is good for occasional glancing. Basically, it is a bad fit for content consumption (watching optimised videos from local disk is ok experience, tho), but is promising for other uses including writing text. Which is compelling to many HN people! I use it as rarely as 1-2 times a week, just so I explore the possibilities and practice a bit. Not much time to work on perfecting wearable workflows, but I have some plans.
- floren 7y ago
  Interesting, I'm rather glad to hear the Vufine isn't suitable for reddit/youtube/other bullshit! Makes me more likely to buy one :) One more quick question, what do you use to power the RPi and the display? USB power bank?
  - andrey_utkin 7y ago
    Yes. Look for one which sustains stable uninterrupted power output during charging and charger plugging and unplugging.

neilv 7y ago

A correction to those The Verge articles: the Remembrance Agent was actually by Bradley Rhodes, not Thad Starner. It's interesting that people are still using Twiddlers. At the time that Starner, Rhodes, and others at MIT were first experimenting with what happens when computer technology is always head-up, a typical kit was a Twiddler, Private Eye (mounted on eyeglasses/goggles or hat), and a computer that was hefty by today's standards. Steve Mann had some earlier, unique gear. Rhodes had the hefty computer in a soft cube-shaped shoulder bag that looked like maybe it was a insulated lunchbox, with cables/tubes coming out of it, and going into clothing. He said it took a while to learn that some people were afraid to ask about it or say anything, because they thought it was a medical device. It's great that the computer part can now be done with a tiny $5 Raspi0w. Or with smartphone hardware. (For the smartphone, preferably reflashed with PostmarketOS GNU/Linux, and adding HUD and some kind of discreet command input. Maybe you could do the input with finger on smartphone touchscreen in your pocket, and then you only need to add a HUD on BT/USB. Maybe more battery.)