I just thought I would share a little project with you all. I had been playing with head tracking using opentrack (https://github.com/opentrack/opentrack), and it occurred to me that it would be nice to have a monitor mounted to my head so that I didn't have to try to look sideways at the screen while turning my head away from it. This led me to hacking together a headset that is almost like VR. Components:
- 7-inch Raspberry Pi monitor:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01L6YXZLY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 - 3x Fresnel magnifying lens:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016FPFCQ0/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 - An elastic strap from a pair of safety goggles
- A bike helmet with a shoelace to hold the headset up
- Foam padding that the monitor was packed with
- The box it all came in
I originally wanted to use the anaglyph mode with some 3D glasses to get a 3D effect, but so far I haven't had much luck matching the colors well enough, so I end up with a lot of distracting ghost images and wrong colors. It's still pretty fun without the 3D effect anyway. Here are a few pictures. The funny symbol on the top is an ArUco marker used for head tracking. I am using the PS3 Eye camera for this job, which works really well.
The total length of the housing is 6 inches, and the lens is 3.5 inches from the screen. A magnifying lens is required, because otherwise you will be staring at a tiny screen from a pretty short distance, which causes a lot of eye strain. The fresnel lens is convenient because it is flat, light, and easy to cut, but the downside is that it's not as clear as a regular magnifying lens. I'm keeping my eyes peeled for a suitable one of those.