Pimoroni launches Badgeware line of wearable programmable displays

Pimoroni’s new Badgeware line of wearable electronics are basically high-tech replacements for paper badges that hang from a lanyard around your neck or “hi my name is” stickers you affix to your shirt.

Available with a choice of E Ink, IPS LCD, or LED matrix displays, each member of the Badgeware family is basically a tiny wearable computer with a Raspberry Pi RP2350 microprocessor, support […]

#badger #badgeware #blinky #pimoroni #smartBage #tufty #wearableDisplay

Read more: https://liliputing.com/pimoroni-launches-badgeware-line-of-wearable-programmable-displays/

And yes, I think #ZackFreedman should commercially sell builds of #Optigon|s because I do want to get my hands on an #HMD like that for ages...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAuwW7Wzrng

#Wearable #WearableTech #WearableDisplay #WearableComputing #WearableTech #Wearables #WearableHacks

TECNO Pocket Go hits Kickstarter: Handheld gaming PC with a wearable display

The TECNO Pocket Go is a handheld gaming PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS processor, support for up to 16GB of LPDDR5-6400 memory and 1TB of PCIe 4.0 NVMe storage, and a 50 Wh battery. But it stands out from other recent handhelds like the Valve Steam Deck, Asus ROG Ally, and Lenovo Legion Go in one key way: there’s no built-in display.

Instead, the TECNO Pocket Go is a computer that looks […]

https://liliputing.com/?p=172791

#arGlasses #crowdfunding #handheldGamingPc #headsUpDisplay #kickstarter #pocketGo #tecno #tecnoPocketGo #wearableDisplay

A Microcontroller Friendly AR Headset On The Cheap

Generating the real-time images required for augmented reality (AR) goggles usually requires a fair amount of processing power, to the point that DIY efforts based around the Raspberry Pi often have trouble keeping up. But what if your AR aspirations don't require fancy high-resolution graphics? If text and the occasional icon is enough to get the job done, then these lo-fi AR goggles from [bobricius] might be the ideal solution.

As with previous homebrew AR rigs we've seen, this one starts with an affordable headset designed to project the display of a smartphone onto a pair of curved optical combiners. But instead of tucking a phone into the headset, [bobricius] is using a custom PCB that holds a pair of ST7789 1.3 inch 240 x 240 IPS displays. Connected over SPI and supported by just about any microcontroller you'd care to use, tossing some textual data over your field of vision can be accomplished in just a few lines of code.

[bobricius] has actually put together a couple different versions of the PCB for this project. One uses his custom ATSAMD21E18-based "ArmaBrain" module that packs the MCU and an array of common components onto a 28 mm square board that can be easily dropped into other projects. If you'd rather roll your own solution, the second version of the board that simply holds the two displays in the appropriate position and routes the SPI lines to a convenient header should do nicely.

We've seen augmented reality displays using microcontrollers like the ESP32 before, but those were essentially just remote displays for a more powerful system. We like this simplified approach, as there are plenty of applications where just getting a few lines of text or some low-resolution images would be more than sufficient for the task at hand. Plus, the commercially-made headset this project is based on certainly looks better than some of the other donor goggles we've contemplated modifying in the past.

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#thehackadayprize #wearablehacks #2021hackadayprize #augmentedreality #ipsdisplay #wearabledisplay

Why You Can’t Make Build A Wearable Display With A Just A Transparent OLED

After seeing the cheap transparent OLED displays that have recently come on the market, you might have thought of using them to build a wearable display as an affordable way to build your own wearable display, for much less than the expensive commercial offerings. To save you the inevitable disappointment that would result from such a build, [Zach Freedman] took it upon himself to do so, and show why transparent wearable displays are a harder than it looks.

[Zach] built a headband with integrate microcontroller to hold the transparent rich over his eye. To the wearer, anything shown on the display would be practically invisible save for a slight glow, not just hard to read. Contrary to what many people might think, the hard part of wearable displays is not in the display itself, but rather the optics. The human eye is physically incapable of focusing on any object at that distance, [Zach] explains why this is the case in the video after the break and gives an excellent introduction to optics in the process. For a wearable display to work, all the light beams from the display need to be focused into your eyeball by lenses and or reflectors, without distorting your view of everything beyond the lens. This requires, lightweight and distortion-free collimators and beam splitters, which are expensive and hard to make.

While these transparent OLEDs might not make practical heads-up displays, they are still a cool part for projects like a volumetric display. It is certainly possible to build your own smart glasses or augmented reality glasses, you just need to focus on getting the optics right.

#wearablehacks #oled #transparentdisplay #voidstarlab #wearabledisplay