Sound Reactive Kanye Glasses!

January 1, 2012 by Jesse Congdon 14 Comments

[Ch00f] has decided to ring in the new year with some el wire Kanye glasses. Technically the term for the glasses is either “shutter shades” or “slatted sunglasses”, invented around the 80s by [Alain Mikli] and originally given the nickname “Venetian Sunglasses”. Kanye West evidently got his own retro redesign by the original creator and the rest is history. That is enough Wikipedia for now. [Ch00f] has augmented the original design with six multicolor tracks of EL wire mounted to the shutters of the glasses. The EL wire is fed back through several discrete wires around the wearers ear and to two control boxes. As the video shows, the glasses function as a crude V/U meter based on the audio received by the driver circuit.

Instead of the typical microcontroller [Ch00f] (who has some kind of deep seated issues agaist the Arduino) decided to go full blown analog with the entire design. The audio signal is fed through various Op Amp circuits first amplifying the weak microphone signal then filtering with a low pass filter to focus on the bass frequencies. The filtered bass is then sent to an envelope detector to turn the audio wave into a DC voltage signal. Keeping with the Op Amp design [Ch00f] then uses a resistor ladder and six comparator circuits (with TRIACs on their outputs) to tune the trigger voltage levels of the EL bars. The TRIACs get to deal with the 100 or so volts for the EL strips so that [Ch00f] doesn’t have to party with six EL power supplies in his pocket. For those of you counting at home, that is a total of 13 Op Amps.

The results are fantastic, check the video below to see the glasses in action. Reportedly the circuit does freak out and lock all of the TRIACs in an on state, but a covert flip of the power switch fixes the issue for now. [Ch00f] admits that the project was rather rushed due to the impending new year’s eve party, but now that that is all over with we just need to get [Ch00f] to roll out a stereo version. If you need more [ch00f] we have covered a few of his projects before such as his Icebreaker POV toy hack and a ghetto accelerometer using a reflection sensor.

Thanks for the tips [Daniel] and [Sanchoooo], also via [reddit]. Happy new year!

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Eyelid Shutter Glasses: Fake But Still A Hack

February 22, 2011 by Mike Szczys 26 Comments

If you’ve been keeping up with our featured stories this year you’ll remember the post about using your own eyelids as 3D shutter glasses. Throngs of commenters called this one as fake and they were right. But we still enjoyed the experience… it’s more fun to be trolled when the trolls are skilled and idea is original. The perpetrators have released a follow-up video that shows how it was done. It’s not just an electronic trinket and some acting. There’s well executed post-production which maps out the area around this gentleman’s eyes and edits in the rhythmic blinking that made the farce somewhat believable. Check it out after the break.

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Hardware Hack 3D, Software Still Needed

August 2, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 39 Comments

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k7Vc10YsDk&feature=player_embedded%5D

If you’re on the fence about 3D TV and related technologies [Anton B.] might be able to help you decide. No, he’s not going to shove pamphlets in your face and explain why its the wave of the future. Rather, by showing the hack-ability (its a word) of 3D shutter glasses. A simple bridge of wire across specific contacts can ‘trick’ the glasses into only displaying only the left or right picture.

Wouldn’t that make it just a regular 2D TV again? Yes, that’s the beauty of it. Person A could be watching a completely separate movie pr0n than person B, but all on the same TV. Or two people could be playing a video game, without dividing the screen in half. The only problem is the current lack of software that can interlace movies/games, who’s up for writing some C++ this weekend?

Augmented Reality Glasses

April 19, 2010 by Mike Szczys 28 Comments

Augmented reality is a pretty neat thing but we don’t want to live our lives staring at a smartphone as we walk around. [F00] didn’t either so he built these augmented reality glasses. You can see a hole in the middle of the glasses where he added a webcam. The camera captures the image in front of you, processes it through augmented reality software, then sends the image to the wearable display that makes up the body of this hack. Integrate this into the head-mounted Linux hack and you’ll be able to ride your bike around the real world with your blast shield down instead of being tethered to your trainer in a virtual universe.

Home Cinema 3D (or Just Tick Off Theatergoers)

March 4, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 55 Comments

After a visit to the local theater and discovering the use of IR 3D glasses (for films such as Avatar), the team over at Furrtek wondered how they worked, and more importantly, how the glasses could be manipulated to tick off audience members. While the original intentions seem a bit childish, they did mention that their final setup could also be used for a home cinema with IR 3D glasses.

Onto the good stuff: the glasses receive IR light pulses timed with the movie to black out the appropriate eye with the appropriate frame and producing a 3D effect. With the use of IR Investigator the team grabbed said timings; it was then simply a matter of building their own IR projector, and bringing it back to the theater to annoy the crowd setting it up for their 3D home cinema.

Monocular Head Mounted Display

February 2, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 13 Comments

glasses

[Xenonjon] wanted to make a Heads Up Display that he could use while maintaining the ability to see. The most logical choice was a monocular set up. He had an old Eye-Trek laying around and decided to sacrifice it to make his Heads Up Display. Combining a screen from his TV glasses and a wireless security camera setup, he was able to achieve an untethered monocular HUD. This has a multitude of uses, from displaying vital information, to home made night vision, or just watching TV while you work.

There’s plenty of good pictures and information there. The final result is a pair of safety glasses with the display and a pack that you have to put on your belt that holds batteries and the wireless receiver. It seems as though it isn’t horribly cumbersome, but we’d have to try it for a while to say if it would be ergonomically sound.

3D Glasses For An SGI

June 30, 2008 by Juan Aguilar 5 Comments

[Mark Hoekstra] is a true SGI enthusiast, and he proves it with these 3D glasses for an SGI. Taking advantage of the SGI’s stereo viewport, [Hoekstra] created a controller for a pair of CrystalEyes glasses that would allow them to be used with the SGI.

[Hoekstra] used the schematic from [M.C.D. Roos]’s similar project, which used old Asus 3D VR glasses. This project can theoretically be done with any LCD-shutter glasses, the only important thing to know is the maximum shutter voltage the glasses will take. [Hoekstra] felt his way through building the board by common sense alone and somehow managed to avoid any shorts. The board only makes three connections to the glasses: an out to the left lens, one to the right, and a ground wire. After building the controller board out of an LM324 chip and a customized segment of perf board, he learned that he needed a monitor capable of displaying a relatively high bit depth at 100Hz, or 50Hz per eye. He tested the glasses with a game called Hacknoid after making a few last minute changes on the board (forgot the ground fuse), and he was soon making himself dizzy with his functioning 3D glasses.