> As you might have guessed by the long period with no posting, Sensebridge is out of business. We’ve been out of stock on Northpaw Kits since late 2016; we do not have plans to make more kits.
On their downloads page[0] it looks like they have CAD files for the board and a BOM for the components. Probably wouldn't be too hard (or expensive) to have a few boards fabricated by PCBWay or OSHPark. I imagine the enclosure could be 3D printed, though I don't see any CAD files for that. And not sure how easy it'd be to source the other components, especially with all the component shortages these days. But I imagine it'd be possible to resurrect the project, and given that they're not in business anymore, they might be willing to share more information with anyone interested (like CAD files for the enclosure, or specifics on where they sourced the components).
The low-cost services don't seem able to directly eat Eagle-format files, so I could only price it on Eurocircuits [1] where it came out to €50+ which seems like a lot.
Strange for an open project to publish in a proprietary format.
It looks like the files are in an older, binary Eagle file format. Importing it into a newer version of Eagle and saving it in an XML format would be the first step. After that, KiCad might be able to open the files if you prefer an open-source tool. From that you could export Gerber files for the fabrication houses.
A board of that size with just two layers should be $2 + shipping for five boards with e.g. JLCPCB. A bit more if you want to go lead-free.
- https://apps.apple.com/us/app/talk-compass/id1540530352 (has speech prompts, works while screen is locked)
- https://apps.apple.com/qa/app/talking-compass/id1476144391 (speech prompts did not work for me)
- https://apps.apple.com/de/app/blind-compass/id1546647415 (did not work while screen is locked)
Thinking about it the ankle is a pretty clever Place. My wrists are very often in different orientations to my body, but my ankles are more or less always in line with the way I'm facing.
Downside of a belt is that you have a much longer way around your body, which means longer wires, and perhaps an easier chance of breaking something. A belt also implies pants that can accept a belt, which probably wouldn't work for a lot of people, at least not every day with every type/style/color of clothing.
The anklet is reasonably unobtrusive, and unless you are wearing form-fitting pants, you can keep it under your pants leg to keep it out of sight. Even if you're wearing tighter pants, shorts, or a skirt, and you don't mind the under-house-arrest tracker vibe, it's still wearable, and might make for a fun conversation topic.
Agreed that the belt is better from the standpoint of what the device is for, but I think the anklet is a bit more practical. I know I would definitely wear it more often (more or less all the time), but I could not say the same about a belt.
It seems like it would be trivial to write an app that would vibrate the watch every once in a while, with the frequency of vibration inversely proportional to how far you were from magnetic north, but this would no doubt be a pretty big battery drain.
I don't think it is a question of how far you are from magnetic north. The north paw device helped people identify where magnetic north is relative to your current heading.
I am pretty sure by "how far from" he meant the delta of magnetic north to heading angle. Since an Apple watch doesn't have the ability to vibrate any where except the watch body it can't "point" at magnetic north like the North paw does, it would have to indicate magnetic north some other way.
Yes, this was my (clumsy) intention, 'far' in the sense of angular deviation. The thing about our analog brains is that we are very good at processing signals that vary proportionally to some quantity but not very good at internalizing 'limit switch' type signals.
