The Hitachi WIA is also known as the Xybernaut POMA. It uses a Dayang Display.

• Homepage: http://www.hitachi.co.jp/Prod/vims/wia/eng/main.html#
• Homepage: http://www.xybernaut.com/newxybernaut/Solutions/product/poma_product.htm

• Price: $1499.00
• availability: US and asia now, europe in Q4-2002

• weight: ???? Kg (10.0 oz) - including battery
• cpu: 128 MHZ 32bit RISC processor, 230MIPS
• 32MB RAM
• 32 MB ROM
• Type II Compact Flash Slot
• built-in charger
• USB port
• headphone jack (no microphone)
• AC/DC Adaptor/Charger - Worldwide Voltage, Input Voltage - 100 - 240 AC, Output 10volt 1.0 amp

• Battery Pack - Lithium-ion, 7.4 volts, 1300 milliamp
• Optical Pointing Device - 1.8 oz., USB connector can be used in the air, in any orientation

  note

  has 3 buttons

  note

  tracks your finger even if it's half a cemtimeter above the deivce, this can make positioning and holding the pointer in a position harder but is not much of a problem.

  note

  cursor is a bit jumpy and inaccurate unless you apply a bit of pressure

• Head Mount Display -
  • 2.8 oz.
  • 640X480 VGA Full-Color
  • Diagonal View of 30 degrees note: seing the edges and center sharp at the same time can be problematic at times
  • Liquid Crystal on Silicon Display
  • Forehead support for safety and image stability
  • wearable with eye glasses
  • cable length - approximately 4 feet

• Microsoft Windows CE
  • Direct X
  • Windows Media Technology 4.1
  • Windows Media Player 6.4 Control
  • Pocket Word, Inbox, Internet Explorer for CE note: pocket-word is another name for notepad ;)

Also Included

• User Manual
• poma Pouch
• Socket Compact Flash Serial Cable
• Null Modem Cable

some experiences and conclusions

These are my(MarcusWolschon) personal experiences in using this device for just a few days. Feel free to add your own experiences or comment on the conclusions I drew.

display

• at first you need some time to get the display properly clear and sharp but with time that gets easier to acomplish as you put it on.
• the headband keeps the display in position, even while walking (no jiggling) without appliing much pressure on the head.
• you canot change the backlight-brightness, sometimes even black can be too bright
• The detachable "sun-glasses" are needed on sunny days outside but they hinder you in a dark room.
• conclusion: sunglasses hacks should have detachable or "brightable" glasses for dark rooms (or a camera ;) )

screen-design

• the 2 high-contrast color-schemes (white on black and black on white) provide the best readability
• of these 2 only the white-on-black lets you interact with your environment unhindered.
• using read on black or another color makes it harder to read
• conclusion: high contrast can be very important with see-through displays
• conclusion: the windows default color-schema is not satisfactory
• conclusion: a grayscale-display does not have to be worse then a color one
• You often can either not see or not see sharp the edges and borderes of the display. (maybe the lens is too strong for the display-size as they wanted too much of an opening-angle)
• consclusion: don't disply important information, indicators and menues on the border. popup-menues are a good thing
• it gets frustrating to close many applications as the close-button is far away from the then apearting confirm-dislog and the way takes much more time and work then with a mouse

• the charging (10V power-supply, easily plugged in with light cable) is very comfortable to use, it does not hinder you sitting in a chair and not taking the device off. (negative example: MA-IV, very short and heavy cable and switching battery for the plug)
• battery-uptime is no problem with such easy charging on a work-day.
• conclusion: you need not design mega-batteries if you have the charging comfortable

processor

• the SH4 apears to be quite slow compared to the StrongARM? with the same clockspeed, applications have a considerable startup-time

others/windows ce

• of a logitec wireless desktop only the keyboard works but changing the locale does not change the keymap. (No german Umlauts, french accents,... possible at all)
• Windows CE (neither 3.0 nor PPC2002) seem to offer a japanese input method (not even Kana)
• conclusion: an IME at application-level is very helpfull
• the display-cable has just the right length for wearing the display on the same body-side as the device but you cannot put the device into a pocket on your leg and still turn your head
• conclusion: use light and long cables
• the mouse-cable is often too long and hangs outside a pocket
• conclusion: a light, long cable for a peripheral should be retractable (manually adjustable length should be perfect)
• storing the display can get problematic as you cannot twist the display far enough to get the assemnbly anything near flat (or cubic/round)
• there is no battery-indicator always visible, thus you get jumpy (do I still have enough? where am I?)
• conclusion: give a precise indicator telling time and percentage (only percentage make you save too much as you see: shit, lost another percent instead of using it all up [not a good idea as CE stores user-data in ram instead of a good flash file-system like Linux])
• the display-cable distracts as it moves along your body
• conclusion: provide a clip to atach the cable to the clothing at 2 points
• you cannot have the cable under your clothing and put the display is a pocket
• conclusion: with such a clip, make the cable detachable and let the user atach the plug on the cable to the clip (so it does not dangle or must be looked for at re-ataching)

• the ability of the text-editor to zoom is very usefull for reading long texts as it it quite stressfull to read small text if it's not 100% sharp (for short messages and menues this does not matter)
• most of the time you have the device turned off and the display translucent

created the page as there was none for this device yet

-- MarcusWolschon - 30 Mar 2002

Entered my personal experiences in using such a unit for a few days.