The IBM watchpad is a wrist mounted embedded computer running linux 2.4 on an ARM processor. With integrated fingerprint reader, bluetooth, infrared, speaker, microphone, touchscreen and push button interfaces - the watchpad 1.5 is a great environment to program in.

Note the spiral interconnect patterns used when configuring the watch from bare metal and the penguin shaped disassembly tool was a nice touch. If you are looking for images of the front of the watch, google images has quite a few, as well as pictures of the OLED version and other models. This particular model was used in a project to help enhance the situational awareness of automobile operators. Demonstration video of the work is available on youtube.

Specifically, I wrote an application that transmits the devices' accelerometer readings to a bluetooth enabled data collection tool. Great fun doing some semi-embedded programming accessing hardware devices and building ultra lightweight linux applications. Cross-compilers, ARM architecture, and plenty to learn. The work done in this project led directly to the creation of the knockAge program. Special thanks to Chandra Narayanaswami and Mandrayam Raghunath for helping explore the WatchPad and associated opportunities.

This work resulted in a paper submitted to the International Symposium on Wearable Computing (ISWC 2006), co-authored with Chandrasekhar Narayanaswami. You can view the demonstration video that goes along with this paper on youtube.