New product idea: Pine Glasses

[Blathers]

I was browsing hackaday and came across this:
https://hackaday.io/project/18033-raspbe...zero-prism

I've been wanting a pair of smart glasses since I saw Google glass, and went on to look at some of the DIY prototypes to see how feasible it would be to make a basic one myself. Based on the DIY versions I've seen, it's not difficult to produce something that will have some basic functionality. Additionally, the hackaday project linked above has done the best job making it compact.

Unlike the hackaday project, I'm not proposing any HDMI input or connecting it to a single board computer. Rather, I'm thinking of a product more along the lines of a pinetime - connecting to your smartphone or computer and displaying notifications, turn by turn directions, the time, weather, etc. It would be a simple, small device that clips onto the arm of a pair of glasses, with a small prism extending in-front of one of the user's eyes.  The actual device is pretty simple, and should actually be pretty straightforward to manufacture. It would comprise of a small (< 0.5") screen, a lens, a prism, a microcontroller and a battery. I personally would be against including a camera.

Now the project linked above used a screen similar to this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/392497361566

That would be awesome, but it would need a beefier microcontroller, and would making programming more difficult, and increase the price by quite a lot.

The best "simple" screen I've been able to find is this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/293291361583

Cheap, small but no frills. It would be fine for basic notifications and display though.

That got me thinking, at the end of the day the device is very similar to the pinetime. Using the same microcontroller as the pinetime would greatly simplify development, as the smartphone/computer apps already exist, the firmware from the pinetime could be ported over, and that would bring along with it a bootloader, OTA support, mature bluetooth support, app framework, etc.

This would be a unique device, with no similar devices to compete with. A low end version would not be difficult to produce, and the great strides made with the pinetime would allow this project to hit the ground running.

[barray]

I've been waiting for a low-cost AR platform for quite a while, I would definitely support the want for such a device. Just having what essentially amounts to a 'dumb terminal' would be very cool. The reason for wanting open-source is that I don't want to be trapped into an eco-system of some large company and the reason for not wanting to build them myself is that I couldn't possibly get as great a finished product as a manufacturer could.

In terms of sensors, I believe you would want some kind of touch/buttons built into the glasses frame and I think ideally some 9-axis IMU to feedback head orientation to the device running the computation. A camera could be nice, but not required as you suggest.

In terms of processors, the BL602 might be better suited. Bluetooth might serve to be a little too slow for transferring images in real time, but WiFi should easily be fast enough if the goal is kept reasonable.

Whilst I believe Pine could do a good job of creating such a platform, I suspect they already have their hands full building open-source versions of existing devices.

[erikzoltan]

I would love to be part of any sort of pine glasses project.

If I had a pair of AR glasses that could simply act as a bluetooth display for a pinephone or other mobile device, then I could walk around with a standard Linux display in my field of vision. This would be a game changer on its own. I don't need head tracking or any kind of AR software. But I do need feel like I'm looking at one display rather than two separate displays in each eye.

This would be the simplest way to get started. I could browse the web or edit code in vim while I'm out walking the dog.