I'm in the hardware programming phase right now (and consequently-- experiencing, writer's block?) of a little input device I schemed up recently.
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What I envisioned in starting this project was that people who are entering in to the blossoming world of wearables are very used to one handed operation of their devices, from ideally midriff area. Reaching to your face for Google Glass seems tacky as all hell, and attempting to swipe at a notification on your Android Wear to me seems to be less intuitive than it needs be, grabbing at your wrist with your opposite hand and all.
The basic idea is this: it's a little ring you'd wear on your left or right index (pointer) finger, with an input pad for swipe or tap gestures only. You could actuate the pad with your thumb, (my plan is with a capacitive touch sensor, and a 4/8 array of pads in a matrix) which is read into a MCU, and fired out via Bluetooth 4 LE as an HID report for touchpad.
I fathom I could make such a ring that would drastically increase the utility of these wearable devices for most people, and for some (people with limited/no function in one arm) use at all of these items.
The best part of it is that BLE4.0 is incredibly low power, and a device of this type could likely run off of a small battery for the life of the ring, (else I've schemed up a hypothetical plan for thermally harvested power
) so you wouldn't need to charge it, maintain it, really do much of anything with it.
So far I've narrowed down all of the different hardware level things I'd need to make a working prototype of this beast, (getting them to the NWT is another story, but I'm only here for another half a month, after which this project will take off full scale) where I seem to be lacking right now is in motivation.
So, I want to know what you people think! Is this a waste of my time? Are you going to go out and make one, copyright it, and become a millionaire? (Please, include me in your memoirs), or am I on the right track here?