• Change of direction...

    Ishiyakazuo • 12/02/2015 at 19:48 • 0 comments

    Despite the lack of activity, I haven't given up on this. However, it has come to my attention that I really don't have enough knowledge about how to ensure that this doesn't cause more harm than good. I've made a Tetris for Raspberry Pi that works with HDMI 3D TVs, and that works quite well according to those who have used it, but it seems that it works well for a good reason: both of your eyes are naturally aligned in that case. If I start trying to align two separate displays, it could instead cause eye strain.

    A number of things have affected where I was going with this:

    1) The release of Raspberry Pi Zero. At this point, there's no real reason to not use that, aside from battery life (but I wasn't sure I was going to end up on batteries anyway). With the Zero, I can wire it to a single larger LCD and use a Google Cardboard to get most of the way there without a huge increase in cost (and probably a decrease in build complexity). I like that.

    2) Just having the time to do it... I've got a number of projects in my queue but I haven't had time to look at them over the past year. I'm hoping this changes soon.

    3) As mentioned above, a lack of knowledge on how to ensure this doesn't hurt people's eyes.

  • Entry #1: Gathering Parts

    Ishiyakazuo • 08/19/2014 at 15:18 • 0 comments

    I've been working on getting parts together for a prototype of this for awhile now, and I'm awfully close to having them all.

    Originally, I had planned on using some glasses that have loupes mounted to them that I found on eBay for electronics work, but mounting the LCDs to them is a bit difficult, to say the least.  I've also found that people like to keep their original glasses on while playing, and use 3D glasses that fit over them, so using loupes is not going to work for that usage.

    The plan, as it stands, is to modify safety goggles as follows:

    - Make 4 or more holes for bolts
    - Make a 3D-printed plate that holds the LCDs and the main PCB a distance away from the goggles' lenses
    - Make a thin 3D-printed frame to slide one or more Fresnel lenses in per-eye, to allow for near-eye focusing of the LCDs

    The initial PCB will have the following parts:

    - 2x LCD connectors (or directly solder the LCD's polyimide FPC)
    - Battery pack connector (2 pin 0.1" header)
    - controller port
    - programming port (might be combined with controller port)
    - 3V regulator for LCDs
    - ATMega328, with Arduino bootloader for convenience of developers
    - Misc. other bits and pieces

    I have the LCDs here, and some inexpensive Fresnel lenses (10 for $2!) are on their way.