James' Wearable Computing Research

The V3: The New Wearable Arrives!

May 2001

Since the birth of the WearCAM, a revolution in wearable computing research was sparked off in the School of Electronic & Electrical Engineering, the University of Birmingham. Although there had been previous sound work in the area of Wearable Computing, never before had we had our very own to play with. This opened up all sorts of possibilities. Now we can tweak and modify the design as much as we like without worrying about destroying what would have been an expensive item to buy.

Field Trials

The WearCAM was used in many different situations in order to research different areas and implications of wearable systems. The field trials included:

Children as Photographers - Rock Climbing Etc
Archaeological Field Trials, Surveying, Measurement & Logging
Head-Up-Display Research - Memory Research

These trials, in particular the children as photographers, indicated deficiencies in the design. Clearly a better enclosure was required with solid connectors etc.

Changes

The problems encountered with the original were:

WearCAM's Case had sharp edges which might have proved dangerous.
The external power supply led to problems with intermittent connection problems.
The fixing of the HDD was too ridged casing complications with the HDD under usage conditions
The lid wasn't secure and could be caught in clothing.
The belt mounting was via insulation tape.

All of these problems are really to be expected with an early prototype. The WearCAM wasn't really designed with usage in mind, rather to protect its processor from the environment.

The V3 along side its predecessor

The V3 addressed all of the problems of the initial field trials and produced a nice working system that is very versatile. As it is the machine can be used in many applications including automotive portable desktop or ultra-mobile systems.

Specification

Currently the V3 Employs the same internal archetecture as the WearCAM with only subtle differences such as combined mouse/keyboard port. The main board is a PC/104 Plus board supplied by Miles Industrial Electronics, which requires very little modification for the V3. The maximum specification supported by the V3 is:

Pentium III 500Mhz (or Celeron 700Mhz), 128Mb Ram and a 17Gb HDD. Due to funding constraints and prudence, it has been decided to stick to the 266MHz Core until a substantially faster and lower power core such as an 700Mhz Ultra-Low-Power Pentium III version can be made. Recent developments are showing that our 700MHz PIII version will be along very soon. The hardware is already in place, but slightly differing dimensions require enclosure modifications.

Underneath the lid, unwired there is at least 0.01 mm to spare!

If you have any specific applications for further research using this device feel free to contact us.

For further details to the V3, Please refer to the Revision History.

Quick Links

Name it!

Currently the V3 is only known by its version number, if you would like to suggest a name, please contact us at names@wear-it.net