Author Topic: Projection watch on Indiegogo  (Read 59588 times)

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Online tom66

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #25 on: September 19, 2014, 08:28:13 am »
1400mAh in something that small? The DLP is the most practical, but I'd wonder what TI's MOQ is before they'll talk to you.
 

Offline Precipice

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #26 on: September 19, 2014, 08:42:59 am »
Hmm, I've done DaVinci designs. Not on 1400mAh you don't. and doubly so not with a DLP and bright light source.

Although prototyping with easily available dev boards does make sense, DaVinci series simply doesn't. This continues to be a glorious scam.
 

Offline cloudscapes

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #27 on: September 20, 2014, 11:31:24 pm »
they could have a full desktop CPU wired up to an external power source, and the image STILL won't look clear at that steep angle, along with arm irregularities. not even remotely close.

I fully expect prototype photos to show the user bending their hand as far backwards as they can.
 

Offline Precipice

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #28 on: September 21, 2014, 07:23:15 am »
I fully expect prototype photos to show the user bending their hand as far backwards as they can.

and the camera should always look down the arm as much as possible, to line up with the projector.

I suspect that, like MuOptics, we'll see a somewhat crappy almost-product. There's nothing terribly hard about projecting _something_ onto skin. Just relax the requirements on bracelet height, power, resolution, flatness, maybe colours, and you can project an image through a tiny LCD easily enough. It'll suck, but they'll have shown enough willing to avoid the lynch mob. A few salaries for the 2 years it'll take to get to lynching point, and the money's gone. The problem then, as with Mu, is whether there's anything left in the kitty to deliver any perks.
 

Offline Dongulus

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #29 on: September 30, 2014, 08:39:33 pm »
This closed at $1,442,642.
Apparently 8k people were very impressed by a bunch of renderings and poorly Photoshopped stock images.

Now they are starting their phase of building a first prototype. An update from earlier this month shows some work with the DLP projector on a development board. The projection angle in the last picture doesn't look like you would have to kink your hand back at a 90 deg angle (gauging by eye, not judging from the pasted picture of a hand), but it's definitely not flat. The lens they have used to accomplish this is rather bulky; I don't know how they plan on slimming that down for the small form factor.

In the most recent update from last week, they are starting to come down to a decision on the most important aspect of the project: what will the smart phone app UI look like?

 

Offline cloudscapes

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #30 on: September 30, 2014, 11:22:50 pm »
Anyone recognize the board? Looks chock-full of peripherals.

I'm skeptical of this as any sort of proof of concept. The steepness of the angle will still be much greater with the lens strapped to the wrist, resulting in extremely elongated numbers (extra blurry at the top and bottom). Anyone with an eye for 3D/geometry can see that.
« Last Edit: September 30, 2014, 11:27:24 pm by cloudscapes »
 

Offline sunnyhighway

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #31 on: September 30, 2014, 11:23:35 pm »
The projection angle in the last picture doesn't look like you would have to kink your hand back at a 90 deg angle (gauging by eye, not judging from the pasted picture of a hand), but it's definitely not flat.

But you would still have to bend your wrist at a 45 deg angle from the looks of the pictures.

Another issue is text orientation.
I guess they finally figured out the original idea of text orientation (as shown in the picture below)  was impossible because of focusing issues.
Notice that the projection in their prototype has now been rotated 90 deg and contains only a single line of text where the top of the digits already are out of focus.


 

Offline cloudscapes

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #32 on: September 30, 2014, 11:57:00 pm »
I took a couple photos of my arm/hand just a minute ago with the intent of doing a few photoshop mockups of what I think it could look like, but stopped before I got further. I just can't be bothered. I see 2 ways on how they could get a semi-clear projection on the hand like that.

1. Have the projector so far up the arm that it can project an image that's not too distorted. I'm talking half-way up the forearm. Nobody wants a watch like that.

2. Have it stick up from the arm really high, like those horrible TV watches. Or higher.



My day job for the last 13 years has been 3D artist, so visualizing how things should look in "space", and how thigns visually interact with each-other is second nature to me, like breathing. It just can't work with the projector resting that close to the skin. It'll be a smear. The problem is the closer the projector is to the hand, and the closer it is to the skin, is you'll have an exaggerated angle. If you point near the base of the hand, the stretching will be lessened, but the projection will be partially obfuscated by bumps and hairs on your arm. It will be a really bumpy and hairy projection. You can point it up higher on the hand, less of your arm bumps/hairs will be in the way, but the smearing will just intensify.

If they'd market this as a bulky-ass box on a wrist with a blurry yet somewhat usable projection, then I'd have no issue with the campaign. Instead they have dark-emitting LEDs in high-def, no edge bleeding whatsoever, coming from an impossible angle. It's insulting.

I suspect that if they end up with a prototype, it'll look very much like that TV watch pic above, with the tiny projected numerals barely away from the watch.

If they had the money and the time/knowhow, they could do something REALLY fancy, like keep it small, then a mirror pops up from the top of the watch when you want to look at the time. That would keep the watch low-profile, and still provide the projection with a good "view" of the back of the hand. Though that's probably too much savoir-faire for these guys. Or indeed most people.
« Last Edit: October 01, 2014, 12:02:37 am by cloudscapes »
 

Offline Rasz

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #33 on: November 28, 2014, 11:28:27 pm »
http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/11/28/1548205

sadly full atyicle is paywalled, but we get this  snipped for free:

"Ritot, a bracelet that projects the time in a large font onto the back of the wearer's hand (Indiegogo). The team drew heat when it was revealed that they initially provided fake names for their founders, and falsely implied that the company is based in the USA; they are actually in the Ukraine. More serious concerns were raised by netizens regarding the technical feasibility of the device; while the project is not yet late, it has been noted that no working prototype has been demonstrated."
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Online tom66

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #34 on: November 30, 2014, 06:15:19 pm »
They're making DEDs by passing too much current through the red LED. Some users will naturally complain about the burning smell but this will dissipate after a few minutes of usage.
 

Offline firewalker

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #35 on: November 30, 2014, 06:40:39 pm »
IGG should be taken down.

Alexander.
Become a realist, stay a dreamer.

 

Offline HackedFridgeMagnet

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #36 on: November 30, 2014, 10:27:23 pm »
They might win the Physics Nobel Prize 2015 for the 'anti-photon' emitting LED.
 

Offline firewalker

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #37 on: December 01, 2014, 06:29:05 am »
They could use a high power LASER to burn the time to the skin for high contrast!!!

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Offline daqq

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #38 on: December 01, 2014, 07:54:08 am »
Quote
Over $1.3M...that's going to be a lot of pissed off customers when this fails spectacularly.
I'm gonna fetch my special popcorn, sit back and watch the fun.
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Online tom66

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #39 on: December 01, 2014, 11:52:04 am »
At the same time, if you back a project on flexible funding and it achieves no where near what is necessary to proceed with the project, then it would be wise to cancel as well.

Actually, if it's a hardware project on IGG: Don't invest.
 

Offline bitwelder

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #40 on: December 01, 2014, 06:19:49 pm »
Well, the picture of the project author definitely gives confidence
that he's primarily interested in the technological achievements, right?  >:D

 

Offline Yago

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #41 on: December 01, 2014, 06:22:13 pm »
Did they miss a trick all along?

Bend all fingers to 90deg, and project from inside of wrist onto that.
It isn't flat, but still a chance, it is shaded from light and provides some privacy from those around.

Meh though, does it come free with some plastic cat ears? :P
 

Online mikerj

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #42 on: December 02, 2014, 01:51:20 pm »
Meh though, does it come free with some plastic cat ears? :P

:D 

Plastic cat ears with speakers that loudly announce the time to everyone in the vicinity whenever you check your projection watch?  You may be on to something!
 

Online Kean

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #43 on: April 30, 2015, 12:01:57 pm »
After many months, Ritot have just posted a preliminary schematic!



I personally don't think a low end MSP430 is really ideal for driving a WVGA DLP/DMD projector, although with external flash they could have a bunch of images and fonts to work from.  But it will be very limited in terms of graphics & animation that most people would expect in a modern product.  And not sure it could handle the keystone correction that is going to be needed.  I guess they could do all image generation/correction in the smartphone, but then the watch is rather dependant on the phone being available.

One obvious problem with the schematic is that they're sharing a single Chip Select signal across 3 SPI slave devices.
Also no power control or battery charging, but that is not hard to add compared to the optics challenge they've yet to overcome.
 

Online Kean

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #44 on: April 30, 2015, 12:35:12 pm »
One obvious problem with the schematic is that they're sharing a single Chip Select signal across 3 SPI slave devices.
Actually, upon looking closer the external flash and BLE module share a common SPI chip select - which won't work
The DLP display controller has both its clock and chip select inputs connected to the master SPI clock.  Again, this just won't work.

So they haven't even done basic validation of the schematic, let alone prototyped it or started on the firmware.
After 7+ months of funding!
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #45 on: April 30, 2015, 12:48:52 pm »
So they haven't even done basic validation of the schematic, let alone prototyped it or started on the firmware.
After 7+ months of funding!

You naysayer!  ;D

They do know the electronics is the easy part, right?
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #46 on: April 30, 2015, 12:49:48 pm »
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #47 on: April 30, 2015, 12:56:21 pm »
Does anyone else think this doesn't look quite right?...

 

Offline andtfoot

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #48 on: April 30, 2015, 01:00:07 pm »
Does anyone else think this doesn't look quite right?...
Looking like it's several times the distance from where the watch would be, and almost perpendicular to the hand?  :-//
 

Offline electr_peter

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Re: Projection watch on Indiegogo
« Reply #49 on: April 30, 2015, 01:00:31 pm »
Does anyone else think this doesn't look quite right?...
Arm was bent but image near knuckles did not moved by much at all - meaning they have simple projector in front of the wrist but not on the wrist.
 


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