Wearable Sensors & Real Time Data
Oh! I reaaaaaaally reaaaaaaaally want this Compass Coat with the Prudence Avoidance devices and…
The Coat is designed by Stijn Ossevoort from Electronics Laboratory (IfE) as part of his Wearable Dreams work. It would be really great to integrate this coat with the Prudent Avoidance devices created by Kathleen Brandt & Brian Lonsway’s which track electro-magnetic frequency (EMF) exposure using an ELF recording device, location with a GPS, and imagery with a camera. Their Prudent Avoidance devices collect data and input these into:
an evolving online database and wearable data collection device, the work explores the contradictions of data collection, measurement, and representation when used to measure things like "human risk."
Now if all that could be esthetically designed into a comfortable and unobtrusive piece of clothing, with audio recording capabilities, a Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) data gathering device all powered by a solar pack, which then seamelessy stream these data into some exquisite visualizations I would be the most stylin’ data gatherin’ real time experience mappin’ womyn around!
It might even let me sensuously map emotions in motion and know where I am going too!
The Prudent Avoidant system appears to be all stock hardware, which explains it’s size. The same functionality plus GSR plus GPS should be able to be designed into a much smaller, embeddable, unobtrusive package. For example, the bulky (and heavy) NiMh battery pack (green cylinders in photo) could be replaced by a couple Lithium Polymer packs, which are only several millimeters thick, and trickle charge them with flexible solar cells. I also suspect that the data logger they’re using is an overpowered SBC, which you could replace with a tiny PIC or Atmel microcontroller (which drops the power requirements too). The ELF meter (the large grey/white box on the right) could be replaced with a flat copper wire loop and a handful of surface mount components.
If you wanted to take the next step, hook in a GSM/GPRS cellular radio module (which are surprisingly small and inexpensive) and stream the data live back to a script/database on a web server.
This is just the dawn of the connected/shared sense experience…
(nice meeting you last Friday, BTW…)
Comment by Mr. Redshoes — May 17, 2006 @ 11:42 pm
Monsieur Souliers Rouges!
Great informative comment! Since I am only a geek wanna be, could you expand the acronyms for me! Tis a dawn with so much interesting potential…
Comment by Administrator — May 18, 2006 @ 4:51 pm
Mr. Souliers Rouges, if a goil wants to contact you how does she do so with that email address of yours?
Comment by Administrator — May 19, 2006 @ 12:53 pm
NiMh = Nickel metal hydride, a medium density rechargeable battery chemistry
Lithium Polymer = High density, low self-discharge rechargeable battery. Used in portable media players like the iPod because of their thin / rectangular footprint
SBC = Single Board Computer. On closer inspection, they appear to be using something like a Basic Stamp (or Atmel equivalent), which is larger than a standalone microcontroller yet way smaller than an SBC
PIC = Peripheral Interface Controller, basically an 8-bit general purpose microcontroller manufactured by Microchip Incorporated
GSM/GPRS = General System for Mobile Communication / General Packet Radio Service. Two related systems for the transmission of voice, text & socket data, a core part of certain Cellular infrastructures.
I can be found here and there, from time to time…
Comment by Mr. Redshoes — May 19, 2006 @ 6:47 pm
oye veigh! you are just going to have to show me these choses that you are talking about. ici et la!
Comment by Administrator — May 20, 2006 @ 3:35 am