[Ben Krasnow] sticks LEDs in his contacts just for kicks

posted Dec 20th 2011 3:53pm by
filed under: led hacks, Medical hacks

led-contacts

[Ben Krasnow] wrote in, saying that every so often a news story appears covering a project in which researchers embed a single pixel LED display inside a contact lens. The most recent article he saw featured a contact-wearing rabbit, and not being one to shy away from damaging his own body in the name of science, he decided to try the experiment on himself.

He started out by soldering a tiny 0402 SMD LED to a hand wound coil, laminating the display between a pair of regular contact lenses. After trying to adhere the lenses to one another using water, he opted to tack the edges together with a pair of hot tweezers, making for a more secure but uncomfortable piece of eyewear. The LED is powered by a simple inductive coil he put together, which uses a spark gap transmitter to flash the LED on and off.

If you’re not freaked out by people sticking things in their eyes, be sure to check out the video below to see [Ben’s] augmented contact lens in action. While it might not give him Terminator-like vision, it’s pretty awesome considering he pieced it together in his workshop in his spare time.



85 Responses to [Ben Krasnow] sticks LEDs in his contacts just for kicks

  • blakepro says:
    December 20, 2011 at 3:58 pm

    Look at how blood shot his eye is by the end of the video. It makes my eyes water just watching it.. and that horrific scene with him trying to get the contact to sit properly on his eye…

    *shudder*

    Reply Report comment
  • Angel says:
    December 20, 2011 at 4:04 pm

    This is nuts. I would never fuck with my eyes. I’m even scared of Lasik and that’s an actual medical procedure.

    Reply Report comment
  • steve says:
    December 20, 2011 at 4:07 pm

    disgusting

    Reply Report comment
  • steve says:
    December 20, 2011 at 4:07 pm

    and moreover – the reason why Ben doesnt get laid.

    Reply Report comment
  • bolke says:
    December 20, 2011 at 4:11 pm

    I wonder where he puts his arduino.

    Reply Report comment
  • macegr says:
    December 20, 2011 at 4:13 pm

    Well, the upside is that if he contaminates and infects his eye and loses it, he’ll have a whole empty eye socket to hack.

    Reply Report comment
  • chuckt says:
    December 20, 2011 at 4:23 pm

    I read about another Do It Your-Self person in the news who was using spring water to decontaminate their contacts and a parasite ate her cornea out.

    I was in the NICU for two weeks and they made me use Purell, handwashing sanitizer and Avgard on my hands just to enter. Every time I touched my camera or cell phone, they made me put Purell hand soap with alcohol on my hands. Here you have someone contaminating their contacts to put something in their eye and Purell makes your hands weepy after a while. And every week there was at least one mom crying.

    This blog post is unsafe and in poor taste.

    Reply Report comment
    • Ptolom says:
      December 20, 2011 at 4:49 pm

      Unsafe maybe, but in poor taste? Aside from the infection issues, I think it’s quite an interesting project. I don’t know how hard it would be to embed another tiny lens to bring it into focus. Perhaps by deforming the contact lens with heat?

      Reply Report comment
    • Willrandship says:
      December 20, 2011 at 4:58 pm

      I’m willing to bet that the majority of the crying was not due to the painful handwashing in that case.

      Reply Report comment
    • crow1170 says:
      December 20, 2011 at 7:06 pm

      This blog post is documentation- “Look, someone is hacking!” Not “Look this is the safest thing to do, ever!”

      Even if he kills himself doing this, there still a journalistic quality of reporting on it. I like this post very much. I don’t plan on doing it, but it’s still nice to see.

      Reply Report comment
    • Eirinn says:
      December 21, 2011 at 12:57 am

      Paranoia is a worse parasite than the one that supposedly ate a persons cornea – Theres doing experiments where you have a good idea about what you’re doing and then there are people that unknowingly do something dangerous. There’s a world of difference.

      Reply Report comment
    • Chris says:
      December 21, 2011 at 3:23 am

      Hey, It’s his body, Let him do whatever he wants to it.

      I’m not about to complain if he wants to stick an arduino up his rectum either, But I wouldnt do it.

      Reply Report comment
    • Chuck Finley says:
      December 21, 2011 at 1:31 pm

      Under-developed babies with poor immune systems in a NICU != an adult with a (presumably) fully intact immune system. You’re not even in the same ballpark.

      Trauma to the eye would be much more likely than an infection issue. Think about it. The contact lenses are sterile, distilled water is sterile, and the electronic components probably never came close to a human being before being packaged and shipped. The most dirty thing he stuck in his eye was his finger!

      Reply Report comment
  • DainBramage1991 says:
    December 20, 2011 at 4:24 pm

    Interesting, but it would be sooooo much easier to do this with glasses – And there wouldn’t be the threat of a nasty infection.

    Reply Report comment
  • N0LKK says:
    December 20, 2011 at 4:26 pm

    To each their own, but this is one build I wouldn’t attempt if I did wear contacts.

    Reply Report comment
  • Harvie.CZ says:
    December 20, 2011 at 4:47 pm

    I think it’s cool. Unless you’ll get into some high-power electromagnetic field that will make the LED burn the lens and possibly your eye.

    I always wanted some display to be unnoticeably embedded into glases. But i don’t know how to make the optics part of this…

    Reply Report comment
  • FractalBrain says:
    December 20, 2011 at 4:50 pm

    Thanks once again for pushing creativity as far as you can while posting what you do.

    Reply Report comment
  • Scott says:
    December 20, 2011 at 4:57 pm

    You should embed the coils in a pair of plain glasses. Positive diopter reading glasses will magnify the eye and add to the effect.

    Reply Report comment
  • fartface says:
    December 20, 2011 at 5:13 pm

    wow, a ragingly stupid thing to do.

    Reply Report comment
  • Chris Crewdson says:
    December 20, 2011 at 5:17 pm

    That you for pushing the edge, brave adventurer. If everyone was as risk-averse as these commenters, the future would never come.

    Reply Report comment
  • pod says:
    December 20, 2011 at 5:19 pm

    I don’t get why everyone is so mad about this.
    Have you even watched the video?

    Reply Report comment
  • Keba says:
    December 20, 2011 at 5:48 pm

    Quite a few negative comments in here.
    I’m sure he will want to submit more projects in the future for people to flame.

    I think its an interesting projects. Keep up the good work!

    Reply Report comment
  • RNC says:
    December 20, 2011 at 6:02 pm

    For a proper device, have the contact lens closest to the eye be an etalon filter of the same wavelength of the LED, so that it is impossible to blind yourself from LED emission through the back of the LED. That, and use thin film deposition of the electronics on the front, so that the size/flexibility of the contact is not compromised. And then: bam! Electronically controlled glowing red eyes.

    Reply Report comment
  • Sven says:
    December 20, 2011 at 6:32 pm

    Yeah, it’s flaming, or whatever you kids are calling it these days.

    The fact remains though:

    This is unbelievably stupid.

    Reply Report comment
  • Moose says:
    December 20, 2011 at 7:01 pm

    I don’t get what the big deal is… As someone who has worn contact lenses his whole life, and rides a motorcycle, I have been through much worse. I’ve had just about every bug there is smack into my eyes (and stay there for a bit) at 30+ mph. Needless to say, I now wear safety glasses, but still… This isn’t really that bad. I have also had plenty of jobs which inadvertently led to dubious substances (sewage and the like) splash up all over my face (and eyes). Sure, I’m an idiot, but this is by comparison not so bad. Worn for what probably amounted to 30 seconds max, and left in a solution which disinfects,is hardly that much of a risk. I REALLY hope all those out there use well sealed goggles when they take a shower or wash dishes, lest some of that water splash up into your eyes….

    Reply Report comment
  • Hirudinea says:
    December 20, 2011 at 7:43 pm

    Gross, but once he’s through with the eye infection he can do what this guy did.

    http://www.eyeborgblog.com/

    Reply Report comment
  • xvpower says:
    December 20, 2011 at 8:25 pm

    I don’t get the hate, shoving coils between 2 contact lenses is done somewhat often for eyetracking (he even mentions this in the video). And disinfecting a couple of lenses is also pretty darn trivial, I wouldn’t worry about infection the only thing is the possibility of scratching his cornea if the 2 contacts did not adhere to each other very well.

    Reply Report comment
  • griffon says:
    December 20, 2011 at 8:57 pm

    He disinfected the lenses before he put them in. Please stop the silly flame war.

    Ignore the flames Ben, you do good work, and despite what people here are saying, you are also being relatively safe at it.

    I enjoyed this. Please continue the great hacks!

    Reply Report comment
  • Justin says:
    December 20, 2011 at 9:01 pm

    Odds of infection seem very low, he says he’s been wearing contacts for 10+ years, he knows what he’s doing in that regard to making sure they’re okay to wear. This is definitely a ‘do not try at home’ project, but aren’t a lot on Hack a Day these kinds of projects? There was only one project I’ve seen on this site that was truly scary and dangerous: The homemade underwater helmet that used a common air compressor to supply air to the diver. This guy isn’t going to die from this. Give it a rest people and just enjoy the article for what it is: A hack.

    Reply Report comment
  • echodelta says:
    December 20, 2011 at 9:02 pm

    Microwave oven tester, heads-up display!

    Reply Report comment
  • Renee says:
    December 20, 2011 at 10:30 pm

    Can the eye even focus on something placed on the cornea? I know in photography you can’t focus on things actually placed on the lens.

    I always thought vision devices like that would have to be in glasses and not on contacts.

    Reply Report comment
  • tech-no-pest says:
    December 20, 2011 at 10:52 pm

    I thought moderators were supposed to filter out the hate…
    Very cool hack. Like the idea of doing the same to a pair of glasses.

    Reply Report comment
  • Doihn says:
    December 20, 2011 at 11:40 pm

    How can people hate this? It’s AWESOME!

    Reply Report comment
  • Eventhorizon says:
    December 20, 2011 at 11:49 pm

    Maybe it would be better of if he used a heat gun while the contact lens in sitting on a round object to keep the eye-side of the lens rounded.

    Reply Report comment
  • dext3r says:
    December 21, 2011 at 12:13 am

    i dont think anyone is really flaming…well, maybe some people, but my reaction was more of a “goddamn i hate how bloodshot that eye is” rather than me actually giving a shit if the guy goes blind from it.

    Reply Report comment
  • EccentricElectron says:
    December 21, 2011 at 12:32 am

    This guy is the definition of “hacker” for me – respect!

    Reply Report comment
  • elektrophreak says:
    December 21, 2011 at 12:41 am

    oh no, this is that guy that was playing with his brain and strong electromagnet earlier…

    Reply Report comment
  • Xtremegamer says:
    December 21, 2011 at 12:41 am

    Add in alot more LEDS + Filter to visualize IR and there you have night vision contactlenses.

    Reply Report comment
  • raako71 says:
    December 21, 2011 at 1:09 am

    omg it’s techno music. worthy:

    Reply Report comment
  • agtrier says:
    December 21, 2011 at 1:28 am

    Kids, don’t try this at home! Seriously.

    Reply Report comment
  • cde says:
    December 21, 2011 at 2:17 am

    By fusing an organic led onto the lens, and printing a trace right onto the lens as well, the problems with this sort of highly hacky prototyping is solved.

    Reply Report comment
  • Zee says:
    December 21, 2011 at 2:51 am

    It’s insulting to the research group that he would propose that he’s “one-upping” them with this horribly unsafe hack.

    Reply Report comment
  • Anonymous says:
    December 21, 2011 at 3:42 am

    This is not unsafe or dangerous, sure it looks horrible, but non of the components are touching his eye, nor is his finger. The only part actually touching his eye is the clean and smooth lens.

    Reply Report comment
  • Mike says:
    December 21, 2011 at 4:36 am

    Anyone remember Zany Zappers?

    Reply Report comment
  • mooneyj says:
    December 21, 2011 at 4:36 am

    Excellent! Informative and well documented project.

    Reply Report comment
  • Thekanester says:
    December 21, 2011 at 4:39 am

    What a hero! Done in the true spirit of early scientific pioneers. Madame Curie didn’t stop to think about the damage she was doing, she just thought it was cool glowie stuff! This is great work that someone can build on.

    Reply Report comment
  • CB4 says:
    December 21, 2011 at 4:54 am

    I love it, disregard the hat0rs.
    Just be careful with scratching the cornea, scarification affects the vision.

    Reply Report comment
  • Cruster says:
    December 21, 2011 at 5:56 am

    Sorry. This is just plain revolting.

    Reply Report comment
  • HackerTom says:
    December 21, 2011 at 7:11 am

    Awsome Hack my hat off to you sir. after viewing the video i was quite looking forward to reading some comments from seasoned hackers giving positive feedback and information improving on his ideas but sigh mostly flamers and people grossed out by eye touching, i agree its a sensitive area to mess around with but true pioneering work allmost allways has an element of danger and i say good on you for doing it to your self instead ov on a defensless animal… on achieving a better seal between the contacts maybee build some sort of form fitted circular heating clamp sealing the whole thing at once like this will avoid the pinching and keep a better more comfortable shape, to creat a true AR disply could it be possible to modulate the incoming light instead of useing leds? create images by dimming select areas of your vision? some sort of micro diffration grating? im not very clued up to optics and exactly how focusing works but off the top of my head is it possible to creat an image that when viewed out of focus becomes visable, lyk viwing it normally it would jst look a blurry mess but then focus on something in the distance and it becomes clear. anyway enough of my ramblings and keep up the good work

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  • Ren says:
    December 21, 2011 at 7:15 am

    For all the effort: the relatively large coils (inner and outer) grab the observers attention far more than the tiny dim red light. Maybe if the inner coil had black varnish instead of red, it would be less noticeable and attention could possibly shift between the big round coil encircling the eye, and possibly, the tiny red dot in the middle of the pupil.

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  • Ptolom says:
    December 21, 2011 at 7:22 am

    It’s not that disgusting. My dad’s eye looked far worse after botched laser surgery.

    Reply Report comment
  • bob says:
    December 21, 2011 at 7:26 am

    Ignore the haters. They flick desperately between the TV and interspazz looking for anything they can whine about in a desperate attempt to convince themselves that they have a purpose.

    Reply Report comment
  • steve eh says:
    December 21, 2011 at 7:44 am

    i think it’s cool…outside the box…cool…

    and…my eye looked worse after i splashed a little diesel in it this morning…anf i van see fime

    Reply Report comment
    • GP says:
      December 21, 2011 at 10:44 am

      Sorry – accidentally reported this comment. Glad your eye is ok. :-)

      Seriously poor implementation from a practical and usability standpoint, however. That’s what bothers me the most. It’s not like this is proof of concept allowing for a more functional future hack – this guy is limited to a SINGLE PIXEL unfocused display – a vibrating earpiece could convey more information. Glasses with LEDs would be far more useful.

      What about glasses with tiny dots etched in the lens in a standard checkerboard matrix- too small to be noticeable with everyday wear – that could be edge lit by LEDs ringing the frame? One could actually have an useful size (32×32?) dot matrix display then….

      Reply Report comment
  • j says:
    December 21, 2011 at 9:31 am

    In all fairness has anyone actually been hurt trying to imitate a hack posted here, or doing a hack (that has been posted here)?

    I always see all this “onoes it’s not safe for x,y and z” but I mean typically the really dangerous stuff is fairly difficult to attempt in the first place and i’m sure obtaining the parts and information you need, leaves plenty of time for someone to talk you out of it.

    The dangerous stuff on hackaday is not easy to imitate. This isn’t like kids trying to do a powerbomb on a table imitating wwf.

    Reply Report comment
    • Ptolom says:
      December 22, 2011 at 3:17 pm

      And even if they are hurt, it’s hardly the fault of some guy on the internet who came up with the idea. If you tried everything you read on the internet you would be dead a million times over within a day.

      Reply Report comment
  • Charles says:
    December 21, 2011 at 9:54 am

    I didn’t read all the comments, so pardon me if this has already been mentioned.

    Safety isn’t really a big issue as long as two things are observed: sterility and smooth blepharal and ocular surfaces of the lens assembly. To ensure both, you might try using gelatin confined between the two lenses to seal the coil between the lenses. Gelatin is easily sterilized (microbiologists do it daily to fill Petri dishes) and should allow adherence of the lenses without distorting either blepharal or ocular surface of the assembly. In any event, a good seeing-eye dog would be something to keep handy.

    Reply Report comment
  • buzzles says:
    December 21, 2011 at 2:22 pm

    Speaking as a contact lens wearer I have two points to make:

    1) He’s using disinfectant/cleaning fluid. Risk of infection will be the same as wearing normal contacts ie, there but minimal.

    2) I’m surprised he’s bothered to even attempt it at home. Contacts are a pain to work with and to get the results he wants, I think he’s going to need a way to actually make contact lenses and use some seriously high quality and expensive lab equipment in order to add electronics to it (probably via printing or some other form of depositing).

    There’s already properly funded labs working towards making contacts do a lot more.

    Reply Report comment
  • Syrus says:
    December 21, 2011 at 3:06 pm

    I like it. Being dangerous and sacrificing an eye can be fun.

    Reply Report comment
  • Robert Cicconetti says:
    December 21, 2011 at 6:38 pm

    Reminds me of some of really scary things Newton did to his eyes. One of which was stick a blunt needle in the eye sockets to generate colored rings in his vision….

    Reply Report comment
    • Piku says:
      December 22, 2011 at 4:01 am

      No it doesn’t… He’s putting something on the surface of his eye… you know, like where millions of people (him included) put contact lenses every day.

      If this freaks you out never watch someone learning how to put contact lenses in for the first time, you’ll probably vomit yourself inside out. Their eyeballs go bright red and the user frequently pokes themselves in the eyeball while trying to remove it.

      Reply Report comment
  • Johan says:
    December 22, 2011 at 12:16 pm

    I’m going to more or less add to the “flames”. This is quite amateuristic regardless of the relative care the guy took.

    Distilled water is not guaranteed to be sterile. The moment it comes into contact with air you can be rather sure it’s not sterile anymore (if it ever was).

    Soft contact lenses will conform to shapes they come into contact with, including the search coil and the led. If anything sticks out it could damage the cornea (front part of the eye) through the contact lens.

    Also, the electronics are touched many times during construction. Are they properly sterilized?

    Finally, putting partially burned plastic in the eye?

    I have seen people doing talks about how they got an emergency corneal transplant because they were sloppy with lenses and got their eye messed up by an infection.

    By the way, this can be done properly. A scleral lens as used for special effects could be modified to “house” the same electronics and be safe to wear for some hours at a time.

    (disclosure: I have received a corneal transplant due to keratoconus and can have rather strong opinions about eye care at moments)

    Reply Report comment
  • yiami says:
    December 22, 2011 at 1:01 pm

    It really hurts to see this, it is like selfmutilation!

    Reply Report comment
  • zeropointmodule says:
    December 23, 2011 at 3:33 pm

    Probably better off using printed coil(s) on the outside of the lens, less risk of damage.

    Also, even an 0402 SMD LED is many times the size of a grain of sand so you need to be sure there are no exposed sharp edges..

    Reply Report comment
  • 1.21gigawatts says:
    December 23, 2011 at 3:39 pm

    Probably a stupid question, but why exactly isn’t there a device that can detect the presence of A.keratitis (aka the pathogen responsible for the corneal damage) in a given water sample or contact, clean or otherwise and alert the user?

    Reply Report comment
  • razor386 says:
    January 15, 2012 at 10:54 pm

    I for one am very impressed with this guy’s work. I didn’t read all the comments that were posted but the general ideas of “screw that”, “it’s disgusting”, and, “infection OMG” should be put aside for this, but still taken into consideration. This is a frontier that even major corporations are scared/slow to handle and he is doing it in his house! It may not be perfect but I doubt very many “first time idea/applications” are. Think of the first surgeries or anything like that. It’s not a comfortable subject but it needed to happen for humanity to make progress. If you want to see something really gross, go to youtube and watch how they remove cataracts. As far as sanitation goes, this guy seems well rounded enough to build circuits like this as well as care for his eyes using contacts for 10+ years, then I think he can monitor his own eyes for possible infections. Bravo…

    Reply Report comment
  • hatedtruth says:
    February 7, 2012 at 2:44 am

    this seems useless as its results have already been seen in rabbits eye, whats the point,productivity or innovation in proving one can replicate a already innovated idea? and what purpose does it serve as far as a bigger picture is concerned? why not try something original like 20 pixels or use smaller wires and microscopes make a more complex design? why use leds? you can use other things that emit light that are far smaller…

    Reply Report comment
  • Matthew says:
    April 8, 2012 at 5:10 pm

    Can someone explain how hes getting power to it with those coils?

    Reply Report comment
  • michael says:
    May 22, 2012 at 1:07 pm

    this would be awesome in combination with johnny lee chungs use of a wii controller to trach head movement, put an ir led in the contacts and you get even better eye tracking

    Reply Report comment

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