Battery life will certainly be an issue. I was planning on using one of the tiny Adafruit LiPos, as they’re small, interchangeable and quite cheap and also support various bits of USB charging kit so that I could make a completely (or very nearly) self contained system. The current ideas I have to lengthen battery life as much as possible include:
- Try and have a really low power display
- Have the backlight, or maybe even the whole display be turned on/off at the touch of a pushbutton, whilst using a RGB LED as an indicator
- wire a long JST extension lead into my most-used jackets/coats and keep a bigger (like 2000 mAh or something) battery in the pocket.
I also think that it should have a rumble motor in it to alert the wearer of texts etc. I might try my first 3D-printed case for this project - it seems like a perfect opportunity. We have a 3D printer at school, so I can easily get access to that as I currently don’t have a spare grand lying around for that kind of thing!
I will certainly post pictures, code and maybe even build instructions for both this, the Pi-Laptop, and some other projects I’m working on on my blog, and probably some pictures in this thread for this project.
Thanks for your replies :)