I won a NASA world competition by building a Heads Up Display (AR) and motion tracking software in ~36h with a classmate. Around 1 year before the Hololens and

I won a NASA world competition by building a Heads Up Display (AR) and motion tracking software in ~36h with a classmate. Around 1 year before the Hololens and similar solutions existed. As my classmate and I were talking through Skype the night before the competition started, I looked through my window and could see the stars. However, I could also see my face dimly lit from my laptop screen overlapping. So it came to me that it was a great way of making a HUD for a prototype. We got to it and built the prototype from scratch. It took a lot of work and resourcefulness, rushing to get a webcam from friends that would work a Sunday morning (in Spain that year shops were closed on Sundays). Then we used several languages I already knew, if I remember correctly: HTML, CSS, PHP as the HUD display was actually a webpage, Processing for hand tracking and C++ for Arduino. I made the whole software part and my classmate the hardware+electronics. There were some more things like sensors and stuff that we made. For the local phase we made it theatrical starting with the moon landing audio and the lights off, with me entering wearing the helmet and barely able to breathe and my classmate with the laptop and cables. Connect the projector and a screen appears. I'm sweating, but I point with my finger at a part of the screen and it correctly reads where and displays the info real-time. The same for the other 4 points and I can feel truly happy inside that it is working. After winning the local one we rushed to get votes since we got into the People's Choice category and we had a strong battle against Macedonia's team. They were Trending Topic for most of the week the contest was happening in their whole country while in Spain it was all about football and celebs and we just made it into regional newspapers at that point. Another team also used bots but of course NASA people detected it. We won in the end, visited Cape Canaveral and saw a rocket launch. One of the best moments (of my life) was when I came to class after winning the whole thing and everyone stood up and started clapping. Here is the project, https://2014.spaceappschallenge.org/project/space-helmet/ https://2014.spaceappschallenge.org/project/space-helmet/ (yes, for the video we used a fishtank and printed GoPros as props) Many edits: added extra info and details, sorry for the long post.