Hardware and engineering

Electronic devices, mechanical contraptions and everything else that's real!
2024.07.29, 11:10 GMT+2

Can a dumb dog make a smart device?

I would say it's been a pretty interesting few days, if it had been. Nothing much has happened, the only worthwhile thing to mention is that I did some sketching last night to pick my portable computer project back up. Or rather... one of them. There's a few.

While a... laptop-class thing is in the works, technically, I'm focusing my attention on something that can't be bought ready-made right now. Smartwatches exist, yes, but not ones this capable.

A top-down photograph of a work surface in black and white. Several pieces of paper show sketched schematics of orthographic and perspective shots of a wrist-worn device. A pencil, set-square and calculator lie over the edges of frame.
Initial concept for a wearable device
Click image to open full size

What you're looking at is a fully functional Linux computer worn on one's lower forearm. Granted, it's just a Pi Zero 2W, so it doesn't even have enough horsepower to open a web browser most of the time, but it doesn't really have to do that. All it has to do is display a UI that I make — as lightweightly as possible, I might add, with SDL3 in all likelihood — and react to user input on the buttons and whatnot present on the device. The fact that it can open a fully-fledged desktop environment on command on an external monitor is simply a nice bonus.

Perhaps I'll even configure it as a bluetooth "guest" (i.e. the thing that you connect, not connect to), so it might really serve the function of a smartwatch if need be, or perhaps more... if I can wrestle the Android environment into obedience, that is. I'm not sure if I'll be able to stomach that stupid IDE that you have to use, along with Kotlin, again. We'll see though. Either way, it would be quite nice to also include non-traditional functions in that smartwatch "driver" app, like transferring various network functions through the phone's cellular connection. I dunno. Seems cool to me anyway