From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <464C6D8F.7040608@conducive.org> Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 22:58:23 +0800 From: W B Hacker User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2) Gecko/20070221 SeaMonkey/1.1.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] Wearables References: <3fd183965e5baa133533b837abfe09c2@csplan9.rit.edu> In-Reply-To: <3fd183965e5baa133533b837abfe09c2@csplan9.rit.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Topicbox-Message-UUID: 6a4d39f2-ead2-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 john@csplan9.rit.edu wrote: >> lucio@proxima.alt.za wrote: >> But if ever there was a market born to take best advantage of Plan9's long suit, >> handheld, or 'wearable' has to be the most obvious contender, and on power nd >> bandwidth consumption as much as CPU cycles or 'local' RAM capacity. >> > > A friend and I are starting a project to create a simple wearable computer. We've > got some hardware to get started; probably will begin with a laptop, our camera > viewfinder HMD, and a keyboard strapped around the waist (crude, I know) or > some form of home-brewed chording device. I considered using Plan 9, but since > we don't plan to include a pointing device yet, and the viewfinder can only display > low resolutions and in black and white, I think we'll end up going with something > designed to be used 80x24 characters at a time... Linux. If somebody can present > me with some good reasons to use Plan 9 instead, we can try it, but I really > don't think Plan 9 actually is ideal for a wearable. > > John > > 'Ideal' only in two senses: - Very well-suited to having the 'heavy' resources remoted over reasonably efficient (low bandwidth) networking. - lacking a GP GUI (rio/acme are, IMNSHO, a coder's IDE, not a GP GUI), but having lightweight tools to implement one (drawterm, VNC) - so you can do 'locally' only what your app really *must* do locally. As to 'pointing device' - why not a tilt-disk, 'clit' or trackball? All of which are cheaply salvaged from new or used hardware. Chording the 'Plan9 way' is not an absolute requirement - just one already built-in. Viewing device? 'Virtual reality' headset, perhaps? Or go the other way... text-to-speech in an earpiece, speech-to-text from a mic. 'Heavy' CPU to convert bothways accurately is remoted. Might mean the heaviest thing you have to wear is... ...a 'dumb' telephone handset and a thin LCD for graphics when needed. My biggest personal objection to most modern PDA/phone rigs (Blackberry, Treo, et al) is the need to grab a stylus and/or otherwise use BOTH hands when NO hands is a nicer goal, and ONE hand was possible even with the ancient HP-200-LX (thumb-typing). Belt-mount and Bluetooth or similar seems a good idea though. Linux? Far too 'heavy', even stripped - which is not as easy as it sounds if you need even basic functionality). if not Plan9, then Minix3 revanche is lighter (and very Posix compliant) But might be better-off with DRDOS and GEM. Seriously. Find an HP-100/200-LX (MSDOS, not DRDOS) and see what was possible lo those many years ago with a couple of the right PCMCIA cards and lithium AA batteries. Used to carry a pair of clip leads and external twin D-cell holder to send faxes and login to CompuServe from hotel rooms. Purchased and discarded batteries locally so as to not have to carry the weight or a charger. ELSE 'borrowed' the rechargeable emergency flashlight found in many hotels. 'Too soon we forget' how much could be accomplished with a lowly VT-whatever 'dumb terminal' connected to the right support infrastructure at a mere 1200 - 9600 bps. These need not replace the entire laptop/desktop 'puterish experience - just bridge the gaps. Bill