Wearable Electronics

Voltaic backpack charges your gadgets on the go

By Gizmag Team

November 7, 2004 The Voltaic backpack is a mobile power source designed to charge your gadgets without tying you to a power outlet.

Embedded in the back of the bag are three tough, lightweight, waterproof solar panels which generate up to 4 watts of power. It holds a Lithium Ion battery pack to store energy for when you need it, and can be supplemented by an AC adapter or a car charger, which are both included. A full range of optional adaptors are also available.

Wires from the battery pack run through the bag to each of the pockets so you can keep your devices charged and ready to go. The Voltaic backpack is powerful enough to charge most portable electronics, including: mobile phones, cameras, two way radios, GPS's, PDA's, even iPods (but it doesn't cover laptops).

Simple, stylish and priced at only US $229, the Voltaic backpack is the perfect fit for the tech laden urban adventurer.

http://www.voltaicsystems.com Read More

Excentrique MP3 music necklace

By Gizmag Team

November 5, 2004 Jens of Sweden has released the ultimate music jewellery with Excentrique - a 24 carat gold MP3 player that is worn around the neck and can store up to 300 tunes.

"We live in an age when jewellery increasingly has more than one function. Jens of Sweden is not an electronic product to keep in your pocket, it is an accessory to adorn your neck, and this is the most exclusive music jewellery in the world today," says Jens Nylander, founder and CEO of Jens of Sweden.

The thumb-sized MP-400 Excentrique has a high-gloss, black polycarbonate front with sides and back in gold. When switched on, the backlit button at the front means that you can see the player in the dark. Excentrique weighs 34 grams including the battery, which gives a play time of 20 hours. It is the market’s smallest player with an OLED screen. Read More

Nyx clothing offers built-in flexible display screens

By Gizmag Team

UPDATED November 9, 2004

There is nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come, and the response to this article has made it the most popular article on the site this week. Similarly, regardless of the trade show at which NYX illuminated clothing is shown, it becomes the talking point of show attendees and the catalyst for vivid imaginations as they seek to project what might happen with this technology over the next few years.

Los Angeles based Nyx clothing is launching a range of customised jackets with built-in flexible display screens that connect to a Palm OS PDA or smartphone such as the Treo or Kyocera, and can display the message of your choice on your clothes. The message and display is more than just a passive single message - the words can be scrolled, messages rotated and NYX also has a microphone-based sound-to-light feature that enables the clothing to synch its light and message pulsing with the beat of the music. Add some imagination to those capabilities and you could create an entirely new form of dancing and entertainment. Read More

Mitsubishi displays boost wearable computing market

By Mike Hanlon

Electronics giant Mitsubushi has shown a miniature wearable head-up display which it will release to the public in 2005. Named the Scopo, it will become the first mass market wearable display to augment reality for the everyday person. Designed for mobility and practicality, the Mitsubushi SCOPO wearable display is not the first available such display, but we expect its low cost (US$400) and ready availability will stimulate the market and further accelerate change in portable computing. Read More

RFID Tracking Chips For Japanese Students.

By Mike Hanlon

Truancy just got harder for recalcitrant students in Japan with the trial of chips that track students' whereabouts. Electronic giant Fujitsu collaborated with a suburban Tokyo private school Rikkyo Elementary to launch a trial where RFID tracking chips were attached to 40 students' backpacks. Read More

Laks watch to help make healthy babies

By Mike Hanlon

We're bullish about the prospects for the LAKS Baby Boom watch. There is no quest more closely monitored than the modern woman seeking to use modern technology to optimize the chances of conceiving a child. And the Baby Boom does almost everything one could expect in tracking the vital numbers before, during and after the pregnancy. The watch calculates calculates the fertile days, indicates in which week of the pregnancy you are, has a name finder with 5000 names, keeps tabs on appointments, medical dates, ad infinitum, and keeps track of the lab reports Read More

The PIMP Watch

By Mike Hanlon

The PIMP watch is the latest in a long list of crazy accessories to come out of Japan. Unlike your standard time-piece the PIMP watch uses around seventy LED's to tell the time using three different colours. The LED's will light up once a minute to display the time, all that's involved is some simple calculations. However, the makers of the PIMP watch don't seem to be too concerned with practical uses. In an era where mobile phones and PDA's can easily be used as time pieces, the makers have focused upon design and aesthetics. Read More

'Thump' sunglasses with integrated MP3 player

By Mike Hanlon

UPDATED November 12, 2004 Oakley has announced the introduction of 'digital audio eyewear' - aka MP3 sunglasses. Named "Thump", the new sunglasses have the audio circuitry built seamlessly into the glasses frame. Oakley's digital music player mounts the speakers to the eyewear frame with miniature extendible booms, enhanced with pivots. They allow the wearer to adjust speaker position for optimal ear placement and to reposition the speakers away from the ears whenever necessary. Read More

Wearable 3D Augmented Reality displays go high resolution

By Mike Hanlon

Wearable 3D Augmented Reality displays have taken a leap forward in viability with the announcement of Microvision's 7.6 Million Pixel Microdisplay unit that can be incorporated into eyeglasses, goggles or helmets to create a stereoscopic, 3-D effect.

These compact, high-resolution displays can further enhance the visual realism of the interactive experience to make the simulated environment more engaging.

Unlike Virtual Reality, where the user's field of view is completely replaced with an artificial visual environment, Augmented Reality uses another technology known as "head tracking" in conjunction with augmented vision to overlay complimentary information on the user's view. Read More

Seven Mile Boots

By Mike Hanlon

Seven League Boots are the stuff of fairy stories but a new design known as "Seven Mile Boots" is aiming to assist the wearer travel virtually whilst strolling around a city. Sitting somewhere between performance and experiential art, Seven Mile Boots are interactive shoes with audio. One can wear the boots, and walk around simultaneousy in the physical world and in the literal world of the internet. By walking in the physical world one may suddenly encounter a group of people chatting in real time in the virtual world. The chats are heard as a spoken text coming from the boots. The concept is that whenever you wear the boots, the physical and the virtual worlds will merge together. Read More

PIX fuses fashion with communication

By Mike Hanlon

PIX is an unconventional product from an unconventional lifestyle company called Xenofreaks that may change the way we interact, especially with those whom we don't know, but would like to. Communication and interaction is the basis of this wearable interactive visual display device. Coined the "ego visualiser" by its designers, PIX could quite possibly pave the way in how we express ourselves through our clothes and accessories in the 21st century. Read More

Concept of Wearable Electronics Gains Momentum

By Mike Hanlon

German clothing manufacturer Rosner and Infineon have announced a jointly developed men's jacket named "mp3blue" that features built-in mobile telephony via Bluetooth and an MP3 player. The electronics are an integral part of the clothing and controlled by a textile keyboard incorporated on the sleeve. This new product for technologically progressive, fashion-conscious men can be ordered via the Internet from August at the MP3BLUE web site. Read More

Augmented Reality enables computer-enhanced work

By Mike Hanlon

With an Augmented Reality system like Arvika, complex tasks such as repairs to a BMW 7 can be greatly simplified and speeded up. Augmented Reality means that, with the help of data glasses, a computer overlays virtual information onto what the viewer actually sees. Siemens Automation and Drives and all the partners in the Arvika project recently demonstrated just how powerful these systems have become. Read More

SenseCam - the Black Box Flight Recorder for human beings

By Mike Hanlon

The SenseCam is a badge-sized wearable visual diary that captures up to 2000 VGA images per day into FLASH memory, offering a continually building repository of information on what you have done during the day in visual form. In addition, sensor data such as movement, light level and temperature is continuously monitored and any sudden changes in any of the above triggers the camera. Read More

Video-feed Sunglasses

By Mike Hanlon

The Eyetop Centra is a pair of fashionable high-tech sunglasses with a built-in heads-up 16-bit colour LCD screen and integrated earplugs that lets wearers watch video content while engaged in other activities. Read More

Interactive Name Badge puts compatible people together

By Mike Hanlon

May 27, 2004 American start-up nTAG has produced an interactive name badge for conferences and social events that significantly improves the quality of people-to-people connectivity. Based on years of research at MIT's Media Lab, nTAG brings social technology into the business event arena where both host and attendee derive numerous benefits compared to the paper badges of the past. While stimulating conversation between attendees, nTAGs also help organisers to deliver event information, track attendance, manage security, send messages, and evaluate surveys and polls in real time. Worn like regular paper badges, nTAGs exchange data with one another using infrared sensors. As attendees approach each other, information is automatically transferred from tag to tag, requiring no action from the wearer. Then the tags' LCD screens illuminate and display information on shared interests -- "Hi Karen, we both work in the fashion apparel industry." Read More

Solar Powered Jacket from SCOTTeVEST

By Mike Hanlon

One of the most remarkable debuts at the 2004 CES was the a solar power jacket prototype designed to allow wearers to carry, connect and charge their portable digital devices. Developed jointly by ICP Solar Technologies and Technology Enabled Clothing company SCOTTeVEST, the solar jacket will go on sale in February 2004 in several models with prices varying from US$200 and US$400. Read More

Bluetooth MP3 Snowboarding Jacket from O'Neill

By Mike Hanlon

Infineon Technologies and O'Neill Europe unveiled the result of a joint product development project on January 14 - their first 'wearable electronics' snowboard jacket with functions such as an MP3 player and mobile telephony by Bluetooth.The jacket will be known as "THE HUB" and technologically clued-in snowboarders will be able to purchase the jacket when O'Neill's 2004/05 winter collection goes on sale later this year. Read More

Retro-fit heads-up display system for motorcycle and bicycle helmets

By Mike Hanlon

Fighter pilots have had it for years but Formula One drivers have only just begun experimenting with heads-up displays, so it was unexpected to find Motion Research Corporation showing their forthcoming consumer heads-up display for motorcycle and bicycle helmets at last Friday's 23rd Annual Cycle World International Motorcycle Show in Seattle. Read More

Sci-fi glasses become fashion eyewear

By Mike Hanlon

A set of glasses that receive data directly and discreetly on an integrated miniature screen have been shown at CeBit 2003. Eyetop, the first commercial pair of glasses with an integrated monitor can be connected to all digital devices... Read More

Frog Design and Motorola unveil a new family of wearable devices

By Mike Hanlon

Sports sunglasses that incorporate a heads-up display, wrist-worn PDAs with voice control and intelligent pens that store a digital copy of your handwriting - these devices will form part of an integrated family of wearable devices under development by Motorola and frog design Read More

LED light glasses re-set the body clock

By Mike Hanlon

Australian Researchers from Flinders University have developed special LED light-glasses designed to re-calibrate our biological clocks and overcome problems such as insomnia and jet lag. Read More

Wearable, High-Res Display for Pocket PC PDAs

By Mike Hanlon

Pocket PC users can now utilise a wearable, high-resolution secondary screen with four times the viewing area of their standard PDA. Read More

Our Clothes are Getting Smarter

By Mike Hanlon

Clothes have done much more than serve as protection from the weather for tens of thousands of years. Over the last few millennia they've been worn as statements of rank and fashion, adapted for countless specialised uses from military combat to surfing and bee-keeping, cut and tailored in every conceivable shape, colour, size and fabric, and become signposts for entire cultures.

Along the way clothing manufacture has embraced and developed many new innovations, and it seems a natural progression for micro-electronics and other emerging 21st century technologies to find their way into our wardrobes next to the zip-off tracksuit pants and the Moon-boots. The result: clothes are getting smarter.Smart clothing will both enhance its primary role as body covering and extend its functionality to keep us connected, entertained, relaxed, safe and healthy. Fabrics and designs with built in temperature control mechanisms will merge with invisible add-ons like mobile phones and MP3 players, sophisticated medical monitoring systems integrated into shirts will save lives and clothes may even provide us with our daily vitamin supplement. Read More

Olympus Eye-Trek finding myriad real-world applications

By Mike Hanlon

More than just a cinema-on-your-face, the expanding range of Olympus Eye-Trek head-mounted displays are finding a myriad of surprising 'real world' applications. Developed primarily for use with DVD and gaming consoles, the Eye-Trek - which includes the FMD-200, FMD-250W and the Sony Playstation2 compatible FMD-20P - has found its way into dentists chairs and F1 simulators as well as being used for virtual reality VR training and simulation, entertainment and educational purposes. Read More