What I have been up to this week:

1) Got the IMU to work with my LilyPad, was able to get good Euler angle readings. Now we’re cookin’ with gas!

2) I started putting together a physical prototype of a wristband and IMU ring. You can see a physical mockup in the picture. Instead of using a flimsy piece of fabric for the wristband, tomorrow I plan to buy a sweatband and stitch my board and other components into it.

3) I’ve been experimenting with a neat little program called Gobetwino, which offers several useful features for communicating between an Arduino and a PC. I plan to use it for writing sensor data to a spreadsheet and analyzing the output, in order to derive activity and posture classification heuristics.

Current concerns:

1) I’m worried about wiring on the IMU. Specifically, I’m worried that connections might be too flimsy, which could cause the IMU to freeze periodically. I can’t think of a reliable solution, short of soldering the wires to the IMU, which I don’t want to do this early in development.

2) I’m also worried about wires being too thick and rigid, which could constrain the hand movement such that we get badly skewed sensor data for typing motion and posture. Anyone got any nicer, more flexible wires?