Were you able to complete this ring?

[Cosmopal]

Hey, The project looks very promising, I would love to colab and get this to completion.

[rabits]

Hi @Cosmopal , no unfortunately I was not able to actually implement it. The complexity, as far I remember, was:

• 2.4Ghz antenna design - quite a complicated topic.
• Battery - had a talk to manufacturers and producing of such were pricey
• Vibration device design was a fail since I'm not that great in mini-physics of magnetic fields and without such vibration the ring looks incomplete.

So if you wish to try to actually build it or can somehow help with the issues - that could be a great kick for me to continue the hw & firmware development. For now it's not really needed by anyone - so I stopped development since have some pressing projects.

As far I see I can copy the antenna design of the ring I used as prototype or try to get OmniRing design: https://www.cse.psu.edu/~mkg31/projects/omniring/ , but not quite sure if that will fit... The battery for sure can be used from another cheap smart ring, but about the vibration device I'm still not sure.

[Cosmopal]

I think building the ring incrementally will be more practical. We can start small and at least have a working prototype on which we can build up. It's a challenging project for me too, which is why my idea of a first version was very small - basically a counting ring that keeps the count of number of times you touched its touch sensor, and is able to transmit that info. We can modify your current design to include a touch sensor instead of the vibration motor.

Can you share some details about the three challenges you mentioned above? Let me take a stab at it. Meanwhile, we could:

• Replace the BT sensor with NFC, which we can use for both comms and charging
• Leave vibration out of scope if it doesn't work out.

The OmniRing's paper is there, but the design, specs or program is not available. One has to fill a Google form to request info. I did try to reach out to OmniRing team, but they have not been responding.

A ring is a very potent wearable device, and I'd love to have a tinkerable open source ring.

[rabits]

I think it's reasonable to build it incrementally - for sure you can remove some unnecessary parts (just do not fill the places there on the PCB). There is a physical button included in the design, because I found that touch button is not work that great - but if you need you can modify it to touch for sure.

"Replace the BT sensor with NFC" - what do you mean? Not quite sure I understand how nfc will work as a charger and what is "BT sensor".

And what kind of additional info I can provide? Not sure if you looked into the repo - there are 3d models, PCB and sample firmware (just the beginning of it), so it contains everything I have for now. And I recalled that I managed to replace the pcb antenna with solid state one, so one problem less!

[Cosmopal]

Yes, I found the docs you had put in the repo. I’m still going through them. I was looking for details like:

• which battery vendors you talked to and what price range did you find?
• What exactly was the challenge with the vibration motor? Was the magnetism from it causing issues with circuit?

[rabits]

• About batteries I talked to:
  • Shenzhen Ykxbattery Energy Co., Ltd., they've requested MOQ 20000pcs and sample making cost is $650.
  • Shenzhen Cowon Technology Limited and General Electronics Technology Co., Ltd., but their batteries was not "arc" type
• Vibration device - even the smallest motors are actually don't fit into the form-factor, so I thought about making a custom magnetic-induction one, where magnet mass will be moved in a chamber between 2 points back and forth hitting the walls and making vibration this way: vibro_device-mk1.blend. I tested a couple of implementations, but they were working not well...
  • First iteration with the small magnet (1h2d) - incorrect magnetic field:
  • Second iteration was with ferromagnetic metal as mass - no pics, the mass moved around but did not made any impact and easily stuck.

[QuartzLibrary]

Hi there! Just found this while looking up OS ring designs.

A couple of thoughts in case they are helpful:

• Things like batteries could be sourced by cannibalizing cheap rings from Aliexpress or similar electronics. That has its own challenges, but could allow you to get a prototype up and running.
• Random thought on vibration is that if tactile feedback is what's desired, then maybe having the ring exert a light pressure on the finger is sufficient (and less energy intensive?). This can still allow for waterproofing if the 'piston' is moved from behind a wall of plastic. Still not as self-contained though.
• While on the topic of whacky ideas, a very small Peltier module could also in theory provide physical feedback.
• I like the idea of inobtrusive wearables, but ideally I would like them to be even more set-and-forget than rings. A design that looks more like blood-glucose monitors, might be easier to design and very cheap to produce. Think a small disk you stick to your arm, or ankle, or whatever really, and forget about for the next two weeks or more. I was looking for OS rings designs to see how hard it would be to repurpose them for this, as it seems much easier.