Thursday 5 February 2009

Steampunk phone glove

It's new invention time! well I say new, I've been fiddling around with this idea for a while, but only recently have I found a way to build it all.

I was re-invigerated to have another look at it following some amazing steampunk pics of computers being sent my way. For those of you not acquainted with the idea of steampunk, it is a nerdy dream that mixes victorian and gothic design and mechanics with the modern. Traditionally this would be steam powered robots driven by cogs or overthetop zepplins laden in gothic architecture. Basically its anything that is from the modern age but it works only using oldy-worldy technology. Of course it doesn't actually have to work, but it does at least look like it might work.



So back to my idea. I wanted to put a phone into a glove so that I could answer it in much the same way as a mime might pretend to talk into their hand i.e. with the microphone in the little finger and a speaker on the thumb. It then rather balooned into a fully functioning finger located keypad.

In anycase, I couldn't find a way of migrating the keypad from the circuit board so I gave up. I then found this:



Genius! Just solder wires straight on! I'm not going to try and draw it all yet, but I think I have the plan pretty clear in my head, so I'll attempt to explain it. The phone sits on the back of the hand, rotated so that the screen can be read normally. Buttons are push to make switches and placed on the back of each finger so that they can be operated by the thumb. Wires run from the buttons to the phone's keypad. The microphone and speaker are also rewired to sit on the thumb and little finger.

Finally the buttons have to be kept in place, so they sill sit on sections of a leather glove, reinforced with soldered copper. The phone itself sits on a leather pad which has two "watch" straps that go around the palm and wrist.

What could be simpler?!

4 comments:

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Anonymous said...

I definitely want to read more soon. BTW, rather good design you have here, but what do you think about changing it once in a few months?

Kro said...

Hey TrotMaster. Just wanted to say what a great job you have done here. An awesome idea and I like the "steampunk" look your trying to get. Awesome! Just to let you know you got another fan. I look forward to any progress updates. Hope your still working on it. You start producing these things I'll buy one for sure. I've not the patients for that minute soldering and wiring on such a tiny scale. So building my own is really not an option. Either way. Way to go man. It's great. I look forward to the final product. Cheers.