[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 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
