Comment by caydenpiercehax
9 days ago
That sounds nice but there's problems in reality.
How do the glasses serve as a "dumb camera to your phone"? What protocol do they use to do this? It doesn't exist. It's something that must be solved at the OS layer.
What if you want to use multiple apps? Are you going to spend 2 minutes each time disconnecting Bluetooth from one phone app, connecting to another, and then using it? No, you need to runtime that lets multiple apps access the sensors as needed.
Do you want to make an app that accesses the microphone? If you want to have translation app running at the same time that you're taking notes, then again you need some way to allow multiple apps to run at once.
MentraOS solves those problems.
"How do the glasses serve as a "dumb camera to your phone"? What protocol do they use to do this? It doesn't exist. It's something that must be solved at the OS layer."
No, Snapchat did this just fine in the software layer with their glasses looooooong ago.
> How do the glasses serve as a "dumb camera to your phone"? What protocol do they use to do this? It doesn't exist. It's something that must be solved at the OS layer.
USB webcams have been a thing for years ;)
I have a pair of Xreal glasses and, while they don’t have a camera, they do have the other components. They are entirely dumb. You plug the USB cable into your phone/laptop/portable gaming device and that’s literally it.
The cable runs discreetly from the back of the ear and has the additional benefit that you don’t need a heavy battery built into the frame of the glasses.
So you definitely can have a XR glasses that are “dumb”.
XREAL is DisplayPort Alt Mode + USB for gyros. It's also wired only. DP needs 10-40Gbps of bandwidth, doesn't work wireless.
USB cameras also aren't natively supported on iOS/Android. You need apps. With apps comes lock-in opportunities which are never not tapped.
So "just use USB" doesn't make technical sense at all.
> XREAL is DisplayPort Alt Mode + USB for gyros. It's also wired only.
I know what Xreal uses. As I said, I have a pair
> DP needs 10-40Gbps of bandwidth, doesn't work wireless.
And as I also said, having a cable is a feature, not a problem.
VR headsets are heavy and uncomfortable. USB powered XR glasses are not. And the reason for that is because you don’t need to make those XR glasses as literal portable computers with heavy batteries.
You might relish the idea of an ugly monstrosity that weighs as much as a laptop strapped to your head. Myself, I’d much rather have something that look and feel like sunglasses. If that means I need a discreet UsB cable behind my ear, then thats a small price to pay because they’d still look less stupid than wearing anything bulkier out in public.
> USB cameras also aren't natively supported on iOS/Android. You need apps. With apps comes lock-in opportunities which are never not tapped.
That’s not a limitation for all platforms though. And you’d have that problem on Android whatever solution you opted for. So it’s a moot point.
> So "just use USB" doesn't make technical sense at all.
It does and plenty of people, myself included, owning a pair of Xreal glasses are proof of that.
The problem here is not USB, it’s that you have very specific differing requirements and thus are dismissing the practical value myself and others have shared.
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A real user-centric OS (like a full-fledged Linux distribution, not something intentionally crippled as badly as Android) would use something like PipeWire[1] for this. It's a project designed entirely around managing multiple multimedia devices so they can be accessed by multiple applications, even concurrently.
[1] https://pipewire.org/
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"USB cameras also aren't natively supported on iOS/Android. You need apps."
The attachable endoscope for my Ulefone Armor would disagree. It works with the stock Android camera app.
Lo and behold, you just need DRIVERS.
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Some people prefer wired because of external battery, bandwidth, signal stability and integration/interop (e.g. usbc hubs). There are always tradeoffs in designs.
(obex or opp or ftp, if you don't care about live previews. Nokia S60 could just do it, so could Windows Mobile 6.x and under. iOS/most Android, nope)
"How do the glasses serve as a dumb camera to the phone": just like a USB camera. USB protocol, or USBIP. "yeah, but what OS" - what OS does a USB webcam need to be a USB webcam? That OS.
"What if you want to use multiple apps?" for a headset that's a window to a phone, you see the phone screen, the phone handles multitasking. Want to switch between apps? Then switch between apps on your phone, and you see the result.
"Do you want to make an app that accesses the microphone?" again, the phone does it. What OS do my bluetooth earphones run to be accessible from my phone?
I agree with what the person you're responding to wants: just an screen/audio interface with my phone. MentraOS is obviously not* aiming to be that, otherwise it wouldn't have any apps at all, especially not things like a "notes" app or any other app I already have on my phone.
The issue is as soon as you start trying to build an app ecosystem, you inevitably create the sort of opportunities business loves to exploit, and then all of a sudden I've got another layer for big tech to try extract stuff from me, when all I wanted was to be able to see my phone screen without having my phone directly in front of me - as someone who uses apps rather than develops them, I don't need another app store or more apps!
*Edit: having read some of their work culture, and the people involved, this isn't a project that's intended to be owned by humans, this is going to become the worst kind of big tech, or nothing.