ZipIt Fully Flashed

My new ZipIt finally has been flashed up to OpenZipIt. This was difficult as there weren't any instructions on how to do it and the relevent information was spread over several different locations on the 'net. That is no longer the case as I have updated the zipit wiki to include detailed instructions on installing OpenZipIt. They are available HERE.

Zipit Arrives

Well, I did order a zipit in the end and it arrived today. So far I have reflashed it to the basic flash image (burn3) prepared by the zipit community. The next step is to get the OpenZipit firmware installed, which is not as well documented. I used my camera phone to take some pictures, maybe I'll post them this weekend.

Definitely more research and work ahead...

Wearable Computing On The Extremely Cheap?

One of the things holding back my cyborg project is the cost of the hardware. I may have found a way to address that problem though, through a stop-gap measure.

How? With this Zipit wireless IM device.

Although limited to IM by default, this page has information on installing linux on it. From there, you could SSH into a real computer and have some real power and resources available to you. Some additional info is available here.

The specs put the screen on this at 1/4 VGA (320x240 grayscale LCD), so a modified software set will probably be required. Something along the lines of G Linaccess, probably.

I still have some more research to do, but this $100 device may be able to bring me a tiny step closer to my goals. Obviously, it lacks the video capabilities I'm looking for long term, but it could potentially address most of my data access needs.