[HN Gopher] Monocle: A pocket sized open-source AR device
___________________________________________________________________
Monocle: A pocket sized open-source AR device
Author : TheBlapse
Score : 370 points
Date : 2023-02-07 15:30 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.brilliantmonocle.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.brilliantmonocle.com)
| bipop5000 wrote:
| Vegeta What does your powerlevel say? its over 9000!!!!! is the
| first thing that came to my mind.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| They need to make ones that are rounded rectangles in bright
| blue/green/pink colours!
| shikshake wrote:
| I've looked around their website and the links people have
| commented here, but I've yet to see a video or image of the
| device actually working. I know it's hard to demo AR devices, but
| a simple video of a phone camera pointing through the device to
| show that there is actually content displaying would add much
| more credibility. Especially for $350 I need to see some sort of
| product demonstration.
| wyldfire wrote:
| It looks like the website does show a "through the lens" still
| photo as a part of a chat/endorsement bottom left hand side of
| the front page. "yeah super excited that our devkit has
| launched. here's me testing replay."
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| The carousel with the play button works if you use the
| keyboard. It gives you an idea of how it works.
| annon3845 wrote:
| It's not much, but https://www.instagram.com/p/CgAu-TTlBHS.
| They're not exactly helping their credibility with claims of
| 16x superZoom from a 720p camera.
| ortusdux wrote:
| It looks like it is actually a 5mp camera. Specifically a
| Omnivision OV5640. I wonder if it is a 720p camera at 16x
| zoom.
|
| https://docs.brilliantmonocle.com/monocle/monocle/#camera
| Miraste wrote:
| It's a 5MP camera for still photos, limited to 720p for
| video--although the data sheet says it can do 1080p as
| well. Perhaps that's bottlenecked elsewhere in the system.
| canucker2016 wrote:
| from https://docs.brilliantmonocle.com/monocle/monocle/#b
| luetooth...: It supports Bluetooth 5.2,
| up to 2Mb/s.
|
| 720p == 1280w x 720h * 3bytes (rgb) * 8bits/byte ==
| 22.1Mb / frame
|
| So video compression is going to have to get more than
| ~10x reduction to fit into 2Mb/s and that's just 1
| frame/sec.
| [deleted]
| dylan604 wrote:
| 720p claim may be specific to the video recording features
| while the stills capture could be at the higher resolution.
| or they could just be over-sampling to help reduce with
| noise by down-scaling the larger resolution to the smaller.
| tootie wrote:
| It seems to me that unlike HoloLens and such, it's not trying
| to be seamless. It's almost entirely obstructing one eye with
| a small screen. They use a translucent case so you can sorta
| see around the screen, but not very well. Kinda butts up
| against what the actual promise of AR was supposed to be.
| com2kid wrote:
| As someone with only 1 eye, this is quite suited to me! I am
| actually sad that the previous crop of "low cost, slim, not earth
| shattering" AR glasses all died out. A camera built into one stem
| and some simple text displayed for one eye would suffice for a
| _ton_ of use cases.
|
| A killer app for me would be floating name tags above people's
| heads, but I imagine that would require better HW than what is
| available here.
|
| I'd love to see what this looks like actually installed on
| glasses, in different configurations.
|
| Some simple AR use cases that I'd like to see: ]
|
| * Turn by turn directions
|
| * Incoming high priority notifications
|
| * Weather alerts
|
| * Front door notifications
|
| * Upcoming meetings
|
| * Interior building navigation
|
| * Shopping Lists (hard to do the interactions on this)
|
| The issue here is none of these are a killer feature, so I
| wouldn't be willing to pay more than a small premium to have them
| added on top of what I normally pay for frames, but since I
| already am paying $300-$500 for frames (before insurance), if
| someone offers the above for another $100 or $150, sure why not.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Shopping Lists (hard to do the interactions on this)
|
| with a companion app, you could scan the barcodes of the items
| as you place them in the cart, and then remove the item from
| the visible list in the AR HUD. shit, tie that into the actual
| store's check out system so you don't have to use their stupid
| POS self-checkout lines. just bag it up and be on your way.
| other than the products that are sold by weight, this seems
| like something we're missing out on as a species.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| This already exists. One example would be Ikea Scan & Go.
| post-it wrote:
| Even better, the device can have a camera that watches you
| put the item in your cart and marks it off the list.
| canucker2016 wrote:
| Or it checks prices/inventory at other stores and lets you
| defer purchases to other stores to reduce how much you
| spend.
| atomicUpdate wrote:
| > A killer app for me would be floating name tags above
| people's heads, but I imagine that would require better HW than
| what is available here.
|
| This is a societal issue, more than a HW/SW issue. Google Glass
| explicitly bans this type of feature:
|
| https://developers.google.com/glass/policies#c_what_you_cant...
|
| > Don't use the camera or microphone to cross-reference and
| immediately present personal information identifying anyone
| other than the user, including use cases such as facial
| recognition and voice print. Glassware that do this will not be
| approved at this time.
|
| This is in response to Congress raising Privacy concerns:
| https://slate.com/technology/2013/05/google-glass-facial-rec...
|
| I wouldn't expect any "official" facial recognition on any of
| these upcoming AR devices any time soon.
| eggy wrote:
| So Google basically banned Ironman! I am sure the government
| uses such devices responsibly ;)
| joshspankit wrote:
| Not even an exception for user-entered data.
|
| Like, I could conceivably take photos of people I meet, store
| those photos along with notes in the iOS notes app (or even a
| contact app) then create a panel of those photos so that I
| can tap the right person and bring up those notes when I see
| them again. AR would simply make this easier and faster.
| Unless the AR camera was hidden it would not make it
| different from a privacy perspective.
| j5155 wrote:
| To make things more confusing, both the iOS photos app and
| Google Photos automatically find faces in your photos and
| the other photos containing them and let you easily tag
| each face with the correct name. The technology to do this
| already exists.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| It'd be useful for teachers who are trying to remember the
| class' names! Geofenced, of course.
| once_inc wrote:
| Pretty wild for congress to raise privacy concerns,
| considering the ungodly amount of data they harvest every day
| on both their own citizens and those of other countries
| across a variety of mediums, agencies, and subsidiaries...
| com2kid wrote:
| > This is a societal issue, more than a HW/SW issue. Google
| Glass explicitly bans this type of feature:
|
| Which is ridiculous, it is giving an advantage to people who
| were born with a good memory for faces.
|
| Do not allow for lookups in any sort of online database, all
| tagging has to be done locally by the user.
| xwdv wrote:
| > I wouldn't expect any "official" facial recognition on any
| of these upcoming AR devices any time soon.
|
| I would, just not for the general public. This would be very
| helpful for police to immediately do a check on people around
| them and spot people with active warrants.
| fatnoah wrote:
| > > A killer app for me would be floating name tags above
| people's heads, but I imagine that would require better HW
| than what is available here.
|
| Which is too bad, since I see AR as potentially being a
| massively useful device for those with memory issues,
| dementia, or who generally need some help with things like
| this.
| jakzurr wrote:
| _floating name tags over heads_
|
| I'd have given anything for that 35 years ago. First thing
| on any contract job, I'd make a map of desks & names - but
| it always tripped me up when people slipped over to work at
| a different desk!
| joshspankit wrote:
| As someone who has struggled with names and dates and times
| my whole life, that is the single use that I was interested
| in.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >This is a societal issue, more than a HW/SW issue. Google
| Glass explicitly bans this type of feature:
|
| Seems like one of those things that can't be stopped. It can
| be slowed, as Google has done, but eventually OSS will allow
| for it. If it is massively outlawed then it can be reduced,
| but even then it'll still be on the level of hidden cameras.
| vsareto wrote:
| >* Turn by turn directions
|
| I wouldn't touch any kind of AR use case while driving. Seems
| ripe for lawsuits when you're obscuring a driver's view
| (especially with an eyepiece compared to putting a HUD on the
| windshield)
| criddell wrote:
| Once head tracking is working, couldn't you show the AR view
| in the exact same place that a windshield HUD would appear?
| fatnoah wrote:
| Yes, yes you could.
| vsareto wrote:
| The easiest way for that is to have the user set that
| position to account for the car model, driver height, and
| seat position, but you're not likely to find a way to pick
| a good safe spot to show it without asking the user.
|
| But if you say this is safe to use while driving, you need
| to handle situations where "this AR app had a bug which
| drew a solid color over the entire view, obstructing my
| view, and caused me to miss the pedestrian", while a
| projected HUD has a limited area it can draw on.
|
| If you can't/won't say it's safe to use while driving, then
| why develop the feature for driving?
|
| This being an eye piece which has software control over
| your entire field of view has potential for danger.
|
| Then you will have to make sure all of that doesn't
| replicate these results from the out set:
| https://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/07/heads-up-displays-in-
| ca...
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| It could work for walking though.
| com2kid wrote:
| > I wouldn't touch any kind of AR use case while driving.
| Seems ripe for lawsuits when you're obscuring a driver's view
| (especially with an eyepiece compared to putting a HUD on the
| windshield)
|
| Cities, walking. :)
|
| Walking around a city pulling out my phone to check
| directions is actively stupid, a HUD with arrows telling me
| what intersection to go down would improve safety on multiple
| fronts. (Theft and not situational awareness).
| dopidopHN wrote:
| Fun; I would just want to plug it to various device though MQTT
| and do trippy display.
| jayd16 wrote:
| I think these are actually kind of lame use cases. They can
| almost entirely be replaced with a smart watch.
|
| Where this device has a unique advantage is overlay AR. Turn by
| turn is somewhat there but I think a better way to look at this
| is passive information. You could walk by a business and see
| hours on a virtual sign. You could make an app to leave virtual
| art you could stumble on. I'd like to see more ideas like that.
| Just a new way to show notifications doesn't cut it for me.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Fix practically anything that instructions have been made
| for, unscrew here, unclip that, pull out that, replace this
| part; do it all backwards to put back together ... with
| visual overlays you're acting as a robot almost (that's good
| and bad).
|
| Also, anything the AR can see you put down/drop can be
| remembered; anything you're looking for can be highlighted
| (in theory).
|
| Would be fun to work on some other ideas.
| cptskippy wrote:
| That would all be great but alas very battery intensive and
| things like dropped item tracking would require a high
| speed high fidelity camera.
| com2kid wrote:
| > You could walk by a business and see hours on a virtual
| sign.
|
| Most stores have those posted already. :-D
|
| > They can almost entirely be replaced with a smart watch.
|
| Agreed, unfortunately current smart watches are tasked with
| doing a lot, and as a result they are not very good at
| blending into the background of life.
|
| I'd also love a life logger, being able to see snapshots of
| my day and quickly create journal entries. An automatic
| record of everyone I talked to, summaries of important
| conversations.
|
| Human potential could be greatly expanded with current day
| technology but sadly we are limiting ourselves.
| fatnoah wrote:
| > Turn by turn directions > Interior building navigation
|
| Disclosure: I worked at one of the companies spending big on AR
| and worked on these exact use cases. Sadly, the company was not
| excited by these cases in the short term, so the projects were
| effectively cancelled. I fully expect them to be revived at
| some point, but not any time soon.
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| As a father of a kid with 1,5 eye -- my daughter's left eye
| stopped developing at young age so we missed the window of
| opportunity to have it corrected on time, so one eye does most
| of the heavy lifting for her, and the other eye can only see a
| blur -- your comment made me think of possible use cases for
| the monocle for her. Maybe notifications using colors and
| shapes that could be perceived by the underdeveloped eye. I
| believe the signals from the monocle would not interfere in any
| way with the good eye, so from a brain's perspective, both
| things could coexist independently. And, as you suggested, it
| could well be a "clip-on" addition to the frame itself. That
| would be nice.
| danielEM wrote:
| I like all these "cool" devices, love the idea, even got myself
| nreal air, but ... these are overpriced gadgets, I mean not worth
| the money that you have to pay for them as these do nothing well:
| not a good AR, not a good screen, not a convenient device,
| expensive.
| batch12 wrote:
| It'd be cool if something like this could be used to selectively
| overlay thermal/ir/uv, night vision, or provide a colorblind
| accessibility tool. I think I would have a use for it then.
| pastdiscovery wrote:
| It already can be and has been done. Look at Mann's Thermocam
| EyeTap, or half of his other papers. He revisits mediating
| human vision with extrasensory overlays often.
| Miraste wrote:
| I have some AR glasses that plug into a phone, and I've been
| experimenting with running the camera feed and using it as a
| third eye (looking up on shelves, eye in the back of the head,
| etc). It's less disorienting than I expected, and in an
| integrated product I'm convinced it would be useful. The camera
| in the Monocle is unfortunately very old and cheap, but a
| modern phone main sensor could do wonders for accessibility.
| Besides what you've listed, written text magnification and
| highlighting has huge potential.
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| Would glasses like yours work for passive monitoring of some
| basic tui dashboards while hiking?
|
| The ideal time for my personal daily commute/schedule to go
| on a 45 min daily hike/walk is 8am-9am. However at exactly
| that time some important automated business processes occur
| (markets related) that it's best I keep an eye on.
|
| If I could wear some glasses that display the information
| required safely I probably could lose 15 lbs easily as I'd be
| able to exercise regularly by hiking each morning, weather
| permitting. Since I also carry a MicroPC and LTE
| connectivity, and phone, so if I see a serious issue on AR
| glasses I could just stop somewhere and get access.
|
| Weird question I guess.
| itomato wrote:
| Paging Zach Friedman
| proee wrote:
| This looks like some kind of Luke-Skywalker Star Wars hardware.
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| "A pocket sized open-source AR device"
|
| a sentence to get Californians and Texans both excited
| Digeridoo_92 wrote:
| I think this would be super killer out of the box if it did most
| of what Pebble smartwatches did/do.
| kreetx wrote:
| Looks really good, anyone have first hand experience?
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| Ordered one (I'm a sucker for tech) - will put up a video once it
| arrives...
| MR4D wrote:
| This just seems too good to be true.
|
| And why do they have a patent on it if it's open source? Do they
| mean just the code? (It only looks like it has the MIT license,
| so assuming just the code).
|
| IF it's real, then it's pretty neat.
| traverseda wrote:
| It's not that much beyond what hobbyists are already making for
| HMDs.
| breck wrote:
| Patented products are strictly worse. Imagine Monocle engineers
| come up with a slightly better design, but they realize it's
| not covered by their patent. What will they do?
|
| As soon as one has a patent, then they are incentivized to sell
| their patented thing, not to switch to the thing that is better
| for their customers.
|
| Patents are a way for lawyers to inject themselves where they
| don't belong to extract rent, making us all worse off. Patents
| are a negative sum game.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| > What will they do?
|
| File a new patent?
| [deleted]
| comment_ran wrote:
| What's the weight of it?
|
| Can I choose different shape of it? For example, rectangular one?
| hermes0 wrote:
| weight: 15g (see https://www.brilliantmonocle.com/monocle)
| comment_ran wrote:
| Thanks. It's on their font page indeed.
| comment_ran wrote:
| 2 cad + 2*25cents = 15.7 g
| ge96 wrote:
| This is really cool almost urge-bought it.
|
| But I wonder what do I use it for?
|
| Looks like you can program it yourself so that's great.
|
| Get more familiarity with FPGA.
|
| I'm thinking about it.
|
| Well... I've supported SVR and Pine64 why not this.
|
| Nothing else can use it to record videos of my stuff working at
| workbench (not a lot of onboard storage though).
|
| Ordered one, will see how it goes. It definitely blocks a
| significant part of your vision but I figure I can toy around
| with it while I'm cooking food. 3D print some glasses for it.
|
| I would be curious if you bought two, could the two talk to each
| other... but the hardware kind of blocks your vision/does not
| seem ideal... still it's something to tinker with.
| randmeerkat wrote:
| > Ordered one, will see how it goes.
|
| Do you have a blog, where it's possible to see what you learn?
| ge96 wrote:
| uhh... this is supposedly my non doxxable account but I will
| post a video on it on YT once I have it. I've done other
| devices eg. Pinephones/SimulaOS/Remarkable 2, so whenever I
| get this I will post it.
|
| looks like once bought they will ship from NY so I should
| have it in a week or so
| ge96 wrote:
| edit: SimulaVR software not OS
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Disorienting to see "open source" and "patented" on the same
| page.
| goodpoint wrote:
| They patented the hardware and only the software is "open
| source".
|
| The MIT license does not provide license to use patents. It's
| really open source in the letter but not in the spirit.
| [deleted]
| Manuel_D wrote:
| This is interesting, but I'm not sure what's the value add over a
| smartphone camera. Normally AR lets you project into stereoscopic
| vision and create 3d shapes in the user's vision - but the
| monocle sacrifices this. Perhaps portability, but it looks pretty
| chunky to wear. Smartphones are actually great for lot of AR
| tasks. Apps like the one that puts a chevron over mountain peaks
| when hiking continue to impress me. But it'd be cool if it finds
| niche - don't want to sound too critical.
| mindwork wrote:
| I'm confused why there is no YouTube in the social media section
| on the site. Demo video is what I need the most to make a
| decision about buying a product
| Buildstarted wrote:
| Found this on their instagram.
| https://www.instagram.com/p/CgAu-TTlBHS/
| ge96 wrote:
| Found something (shows phone using some kind of app/terminal to
| connect to device updating firmware)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DYI3DfHPyw
| [deleted]
| xezian wrote:
| > For normal anticipated use, Monocle's battery will last for
| approximately 2 hours and can be recharged in its case up to 6
| times.
|
| So only 12 hours of total use? Hoping it's a typo or not what it
| sounds like.
| jkelleyrtp wrote:
| Like AirPods, the case has its own battery.
| xezian wrote:
| Ohh, that makes sense, thanks! If I owned AirPods or really
| any comparable product I probably would have understood right
| away.
| petethepig wrote:
| I own airpods and I was just as confused.
| Wistar wrote:
| Me, too. I thought it was oddly disposable or something.
| gwd wrote:
| The website definitely needs to clarify that -- I was
| confused until I saw a photo of the "charging case"
| somewhere, and then it clicked.
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| Someone else answered, but here are some more details. Case has
| a 450mA battery in it, and a USB Type-C jack to recharge it.
|
| https://docs.brilliantmonocle.com/monocle/monocle/#charging-...
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| "For the imaginative hacker"
|
| Translation... _we made some easy hardware, but software is hard
| and we're not even sure what our device will be for, maybe this
| will be cool later?_
| the_arun wrote:
| Honestly $349 is too expensive. Potentially < $100 would
| encourage DIY folks.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Not ideal but kind of understandable in my opinion, sourcing a
| nice microdisplay is hard without connections, and possibly
| some investment.
| matai_kolila wrote:
| [dead]
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Neat but (still) pricey. Not sold on the 640x480 display; it
| requires work to focus you eye to such a short distance and due
| to macular degeneration that will be increasingly impossible as
| you age. In my 20s I could focus on things a couple of
| centimeters (~1") away with the naked eye, in my 50 it's about
| 15cm (5-6"). You can still perceive color, movement etc so a ring
| of LEDs would convey information well, tut trying to read
| anything like a map or scrolling messages limits your market to
| the youth, and probably the myopic youth at that.
| oezi wrote:
| The biggest issue is the lack of a camera facing backwards to
| track your eyes. Without it you can't overlay accurately onto
| real objects.
| andybak wrote:
| I'm not sure thats the right mechanism for positional
| tracking.
|
| But in any case - without 6dof then this isn't really AR in
| any usual sense of the term. It's just half a Google Glass,
| surely?
| sxp wrote:
| > ...it requires work to focus you eye to such a short
| distance...
|
| Modern wearable displays have a focal distance between 1m and
| infinity to improve comfort.
|
| From https://docs.brilliantmonocle.com/monocle/monocle/#display
|
| > The result is a transparent floating display with a 20deg
| field of view. About the size of a table display at arms
| length.
| Groxx wrote:
| I'm fairly sure that quote is only to give a sense of how big
| "20deg" is, as most people aren't intuitively familiar with
| vision cones.
|
| I can't find anything that actually states the focal
| distance, though I agree there's a decent chance it's at
| infinity.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| I think the idea is to project the screen into space at a
| distance.
|
| The documentation shows something like this where the
| projection is off axis from the actual mirror doing the
| projection.
| patze wrote:
| I recently build an AR indoor navigation system for people with
| cognitive impairments. Is there any way to include an inertial
| measurement unit (IMU) in this form factor so we can use VIO?
| candyman wrote:
| Anyone ever check out these Lucyd glasses? They are new, company
| is trying to make a push. Maybe the time is right? Always seems
| too early.
|
| https://lucyd.co/
| achow wrote:
| Detailed documentation gives lot more clarity on the components
| and how does it work. Example, the display that is being used:
|
| https://docs.brilliantmonocle.com/monocle/monocle/#display
| [deleted]
| NHQ wrote:
| I'm holding out for full 480p
| danielnoiz wrote:
| Somewhat related, this and Tilt Five[1] have me excited for the
| AR gaming space.
|
| [1] https://www.tiltfive.com/
| latchkey wrote:
| OMG that would make battle chess so awesome.
|
| Original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKcZwPb7C3k
|
| Modern: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LmJ5gmfLHM
| Groxx wrote:
| Tilt Five is a pretty impressive demo of how good (and cheap!)
| retroreflection can be, but tbh I think the format is just
| kinda unusable outside of demonstrations. It'll always be a
| "small" surface, or it'll take up way too much room that you
| can't use for literally anything else, as you risk damaging the
| surface. And when it's big, you lose a ton of usable space
| because you're seeing the far stuff at a sharp angle, so you
| can't render "big" things over there.
|
| Maybe a roll-down giant screen like for a projector display
| would work better, to give you a big virtual "hole" in a wall,
| but I've only seen it on those smallish tables. Possibly due to
| projection power/angle limits?
| thot_experiment wrote:
| I want an open source monochrome vector display delivered by
| laser to my retinas directly. I would slambuy such a thing and
| dedicated the rest of my life to making the best pocketable
| chorded keyboard.
|
| I, like many of you, am very good at telling a computer what to
| do with letters and symbols. I spend a lot of time in voice calls
| and I often write little scripts while I'm talking to answer
| questions, ballpark numbers etc. That's not to mention the power
| of tools like Wolfram Alpha and Google.
|
| I would like that to be everpresent in my life. I know we'll get
| some semblance of this with conversational AI at some point soon,
| but for me I crave the determinism of real programming. I want to
| be able to summon a quake-style REPL from the sky at will, and
| while looking someone face to face google facts or compute
| probabilities. I want to be able to sketch algorithms while
| walking around in nature.
|
| (Intel was working on something like this at one point but sadly
| the project was abandoned)
| leach wrote:
| Have you ever read snow crash? Makes me immediately think of
| when Hiro goes into gargoyle mode.
|
| I think it would be quite fun to have a HUD like that for daily
| life.
| atoav wrote:
| Seems like a good space for advertisement and pop ups
| wiml wrote:
| I knew some people at a university lab which had developed
| exactly this -- back in the 90s or 00s. I think the problems it
| had are mostly solved since then (lightweight compute/fast
| digital radio/etc).
|
| Presumably the university eventually sold the patents off and
| they're sitting in some dusty corporate vault now, but maybe
| they'll expire soon.
| nighthawk454 wrote:
| I remember that Intel project - Vaunt. They sold the patents to
| North which was acquired by Google. According to this reddit
| thread, most of the team went to Magic Leap afterwards
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AR_MR_XR/comments/javtb8/remember_t...
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Aren't lasers high energy? Why would you ever want that
| pointing into your eye? Why not project regular light?
|
| Edit: never mind above TIL lasers are light and can be dimmed
| croes wrote:
| No, there are low power lasers
|
| https://hackaday.com/2020/04/15/the-smallest-large-
| display-i...
| tootie wrote:
| Laser just means the light is tightly focussed in a beam. It
| says nothing of intensity or wavelength. Those little pen-
| size laser pointers run on AAA batteries.
| pastdiscovery wrote:
| Can/has been done before. To make VRDs safe, they need to be
| dimmed with a filter, but it's achievable.
| once_inc wrote:
| Lasers are regular light, just all pointed in the same
| direction. The output of the laser (its capacity) is what
| makes it "high energy" and the number of photons hitting your
| retina is directly responsible for any warming of the tissue.
| A laser capable of just a bit of power, enough to outshine
| regular daylight by a little bit would be more than enough in
| most cases to make it feasible without concerns to your eyes
| damaging.
| skedaddle wrote:
| Dumb question maybe, but why does it need to be transparent or
| else projected directly into your eye? What doesn't work (or
| wouldn't work for you) about a flip-down hard backed display?
| l2silver wrote:
| So what kind of projects do people generally build for these type
| of OS AR devices?
| ge96 wrote:
| What I'm gonna try is text reading. Like send in snippets of
| text from whatever news/twitter... and read it while doing
| dishes/waiting for food to cook. (assumption from bluetooth
| connection from phone)
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| Perhaps there is something already for this. Another comment
| pointed out that would be HUD not AR.
|
| What you describe is something I also want/need.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I wonder why they chose the Nordic MCU.
| 88stacks wrote:
| I would hope they include some basic apparel to wear the device.
| should one wear it as a pirate's eye patch?
| UncleEntity wrote:
| Looks like it has a clip to attach to the front of a pair of
| glasses.
|
| Obviously suboptimal, really needs to be integrated into some
| old-timey welding goggles for the steampunk vibe.
|
| At $349 it's _almost_ in the range where I'd buy it to play
| around with but I suspect it'd end up in a drawer like a bunch
| of other things that looked cool but I never got around to
| hacking on. Once the technology gets good enough where they can
| fit it into a regular pair of glasses then we can talk --
| though looking at this Bluetooth Aftershockz headset I use that
| day probably isn't too far off.
| petsfed wrote:
| I suspect that fitting something like this into what looks
| like standard prescription glasses will require some advances
| in manufacturing optical materials. I think its already
| possible to make the appropriate lenses to sufficient
| precision, but the cost is a bit prohibitive.
|
| The other issue is that the projection display is a bit low-
| res for what I'd really like to see, but 1 pixel works out to
| ~0.5mm at 1m, so it might be ok. That might be precise enough
| for (for instance) identifying particular through-hole
| connections on a circuit board at a rework station. It's
| certainly adequate for identifying components on an engine.
| bleuuuu wrote:
| they are actually releasing a glasses version
| floren wrote:
| I could combine it with the $200+ Twiddler keyboard that's
| been sitting in the drawer for 5 years, and maybe I'd be on
| to something!
| lanternfish wrote:
| I think the idea is that it clips onto glasses
| arnaudsm wrote:
| Is there a demo video ?
| ge96 wrote:
| closest thing I found so far, shows the real device
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DYI3DfHPyw
| oldstrangers wrote:
| "opto-mechanical" is a wonderful collection of words.
| intrasight wrote:
| So is the idea that this would work in conjunction with one's
| smartphone?
| traverseda wrote:
| Probably a lot of the same use cases as google glass when you
| pair it with a smart phone. I don't think it's going to be
| "augmented reality", you're not going to have very much luck
| live-overlaying map data with the base unit. The built in FPGA
| means you can probably do some real time stuff if you really
| want.
|
| The FPGA+micropython means that there's a lot you could do on
| device if you put in enough development time and converted your
| code to run directly on the FPGA, but it probably works best if
| paired with a smart phone. Someone like google could probably
| get this doing real time text translation off that FPGA, but I
| sure can't.
|
| When paired with a phone you could use this to do real-time
| subtitles for the hard of hearing, display bike direction,
| there's all kinds of uses. Really all it has is bluetooth, the
| camera, some touch controls along the rim, and the display.
| [deleted]
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Without 6DOF tracking or depth mapping, this is just a HUD, not
| AR. Still neat though.
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| Do you know of any existing HUD type glasses that could be
| customized or have an API from a Linux system?
| blensor wrote:
| Are there any relatively low cost 6DOF standalone tracking
| systems in the wild? The closest thing I know are the Quest Pro
| controllers, but I don't understand why nobody is building such
| a thing as a plug an play solution that you can stick onto
| something and have immediate inside out positioning
| numpad0 wrote:
| Sony mocopi QM-SS1 is kind of 6DoF standalone
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0d-x0l2HtA
| numpad0 wrote:
| Technically anything with a camera can be a 6DoF tracker
| ge96 wrote:
| Yeah I'm curious about that, is an IMU enough to work well. The
| iPad/iPhone with the lidar it's rock solid when I tried it.
|
| I don't know if you can offload processing onto your phone with
| this, lag is not good or just not possible. IMU wouldn't make
| sense (phone in your pocket) but yeah. Not sure how you'd do
| the VIO without the I.
| Miraste wrote:
| An IMU is enough for 3dof, but not 6dof. An IMU and a camera
| is enough for 6dof but not on that FPGA.
| [deleted]
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