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Monocle: A pocket sized open-source AR device

brilliantmonocle.com

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Re: Monocle: A pocket sized open-source AR device

#141

Post by malermeister »

com2kid wrote: post #93
vsareto wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>* 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)

> 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 situation…

Would be nice for public transport, too, if indoors navigation works in some of the more complicated train/subway stations!

Re: Monocle: A pocket sized open-source AR device

#142

Post by jayd16 »

com2kid wrote: post #100
jayd16 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> 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…

>Most stores have those posted already. :-D

Ok but it could be 3rd party data instead. It could be live open seating data, etc etc.

Re: Monocle: A pocket sized open-source AR device

#143

Post by sleepybrett »

thot_experiment wrote: post #72

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…

welcome back to the cyborg wearable kids at MIT (and elsewhere) in the 90s. An earlier version of this was the keyboard of choice : https://twiddler.tekgear.com/

Re: Monocle: A pocket sized open-source AR device

#145

Post by sleepybrett »

pastdiscovery wrote: post #84
birdyrooster wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Can/has been done before. To make VRDs safe, they need to be dimmed with a filter, but it's achievable.

A bunch of research at the University of Washington in the mid to late 90s. Has a working display. http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/vrd.html

Re: Monocle: A pocket sized open-source AR device

#146

Post by naravara »

danielEM wrote: post #117

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.

Same. They're neat tech demos, but aside from turn-by-turn directions I don't really see any of them being particularly helpful aside from being a novelty. I really don't get the demand for weird social overlays on top of people, that seems distracting more than anything.

(Even demand for the turn-by-turn I think is largely driven by people allowing turn-by-turn to erode their natural sense of direction and ability to recall directions, but that's a separate point).

There are some useful cases I can imagine, but they would require so much collaboration by other contributors who aren't traditionally inclined towards good UX and software, and would be so niche that I don't see them driving a successful consumer product. In those cases the hardware isn't really the hard question it's "how do we deliver great experiences that can accomplish this without a hitch and without getting in the way?"

For instance, presenting overlays is very useful for something like an inspector to be able to easily cross reference maps, blueprints, and schematics. Uploading an instruction manual for building flat-pack furniture and have it able to literally tell you what to do. Meal prep services overlaying recipes. A tool for guided tours at museums (in which case you'd rent the AR device instead of owning your own). Maybe as a bike or running computer to overlay your time, speed, splits, or whatever.

But these are all such niche use cases I can't imagine a company like Apple, that generally aims to have product lines that sell in the hundreds of millions of units, would ever be in that market.

Re: Monocle: A pocket sized open-source AR device

#147

Post by runsonrum »

j5155 wrote: post #116
joshspankit wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 priv…

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.

Exactly what I was thinking.. Have the feature offline but that would require storage I suppose. Also, the tagging in photo apps were another aspect I thought of. It is ok to tag in one instance but not another.

Re: Monocle: A pocket sized open-source AR device

#149

Post by [deleted] »

com2kid wrote: post #47

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…

[deleted]

Re: Monocle: A pocket sized open-source AR device

#150

Post by RobotToaster »

fatnoah wrote: post #83
atomicUpdate wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 identifyi…

> > 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.

As someone with prosopagnosia, that was my first thought too.
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