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Focals by North
- wlesieutre 8y agoIf the Thalmic Labs name doesn't ring a bell, they're the former makers of the Myo gesture control armband (which was just discontinued). By all customer accounts I've seen it was an expensive gadget that never worked reliably enough to be useful for anything, so hopefully they do better with glasses.
- webmaven 8y agoThese glasses use a physical joystick (on a ring) to control and interact with the display, so it seems they are playing it very safe and this time around. Of course, there are other ways to screw up (build quality, battery life, connectivity), but by eschewing anything fancy like voice control (ala Google Glass) they're signaling a certain conservatism that is reassuring.
- wlesieutre 8y agoIt looks like they have built-in Alexa. Personally not interested in carrying an Amazon smart device with me everywhere, but it'll probably work for people who don't care.
- relyio 8y agoI've tried the Myo a bunch of times, at hackathons and such. I think it was a good product. It actually worked. The thing is that it wasn't that useful and they never found product-market fit. Yet, it was an avenue worth exploring. If you are curious you can find used Myos on eBay, see for yourself. There is a world between them a leap motion for example.
- wlesieutre 8y agoInteresting. I'm curious, but not $100 curious.
- 0x5345414e 8y agoI had one and every single person that tried it had issues with it in the first few minutes. A hackathon is one thing, but it didn't work even close to well enough to be a mainstream consumer product.
- jcelerier 8y ago> By all customer accounts I've seen it was an expensive gadget that never worked reliably enough to be useful for anything, so hopefully they do better with glasses. I've seen multiple very cool live performance from artists using Myo
- mijoharas 8y agoSo I saw a reference to Myo on the page, but I don't see any reference to thalmic labs. Looks like they renamed the company.
- pg_bot 8y agoThe thesis of this product seems to be that Google glass failed due to poor design. I think that's an idea worth exploring and the execution here does look promising, but I'll hold off on judgement until other people can review the device. Here are my immediate, unsolicited, uncollected thoughts: There are many issues that I worry about with this kind of device, but battery safety and battery life are most important to me. Since you are strapping lithium ion batteries to your head, it could be fatal if there is a manufacturing defect or someone can remotely exploit the device. Getting the battery right is likely going to make or break this product. Social acceptance is yet another large hurdle. People do not take kindly to surreptitious film making. We already have enough problems with people glued to their phones and those are at least stored out of sight. I would try my best to ditch the ring. This is the palm pilot stylus all over again. I was waiting for someone to do this, because I'd run the idea through my head and was uncertain of the outcome. I'm not sure if you will succeed, but I think you've made a decent product which is commendable. Good luck.
- anonfunction 8y ago>Social acceptance is yet another large hurdle. People do not take kindly to surreptitious film making. I don't think these even have a camera.
- jonathankoren 8y agoThere’s no indication that a camera is included at all. It appears to be merely a display device with Alexa and a joystick ring. Millions of people carry lithium batteries. They’re fine.
- servercobra 8y agoI don't think this has a camera, which makes me a little sad. That was probably my most used feature with Glass. I was usually taking pictures of my dog who hated cameras, and I could imagine it being great for baby photos too. The lack of camera is probably a conscious choice to make it less of a geeky gadget with privacy concerns and more of a mainstream device.
- ianwalter 8y agoI think the ring is brilliant actually. It's a practical solution to the many UI problems inherent with this medium.
- draw_down 8y agoMaybe not this time, but eventually, someone is going to make it so our phones sit on our faces and beam directly into our eyeballs. Then we’ll never have to look away, ever again! The future stinks.
- throwaway987909 8y ago'information ... so you can have peace of mind" Piss off with this manipulative marking crap. Saying this sort of thing hurts people's mental health.
- chasing 8y agoThey pose their models in such a way to hide it, but the temples of those glasses (where all the tech lives, presumably) are huge. Which feel like they'd both be distracting to wear and to look at someone else wearing. (Although this is certainly an improvement over the Google Glasses design.) I would believe that some people would like a little heads-up display in their glasses. Not everyone. But some people. But I also would believe that the glasses would need to look almost identical to normal glasses for such a thing to take off. People don't want weird bulky shit strapped to their faces. Dark and moody photos that hide the actual size of the things won't be enough.
- baud147258 8y agoSometime at parties I wish for a HUD that would show me people's name and the last time I saw them. On the other hand I dislike wearing glasses at social events, since I don't really need them.
- rebuilder 8y agoI really don't look forward to trying to politely explain why I don't like having my face uploaded into the facial recognition/person-tracking system that will involve.
- pavel_lishin 8y agoI do look forward to our cyberpunk future where to "opt out" of certain systems, you have to paint a certain mark on your face, or put a little QRCode sticker on your cheek. "Sorry, I'm only opted into Google Facemind and FacebookFace; I don't want to be indexed by Amazon Visage."
- erik_seaberg 8y agoPeople have begun studying makeup and hair styles that foil today's face recognition in general: https://cvdazzle.com/ https://cvdazzle.com/
- 8y ago
- lucvh 8y agoUseful specs are here: http://www.bynorth.com/tech http://www.bynorth.com/tech
- DoctorOetker 8y agonot much of a specification of the display system: >Full color, holographic, retinal projection display >Positioned in the line of sight Resolution? Frame rate? Brightness? Color depth?
- comboy 8y agoI'm surprised by android 5.0, I thought newer versions focused on making it more friendly for less powerful devices.
- nine_k 8y agoIt's the lowest version they accept, afaict.
- emilfihlman 8y ago>0.8 mAh battery ... I don't believe this.
- zjacobi 8y agoThat's for the joystick. The actual glasses have a much larger battery.
- zerof1l 8y agoThey mention Qualcomm MSM8909w processor. https://www.qualcomm.com/products/msm8909w https://www.qualcomm.com/products/msm8909w According to its specs it supports resolution of up to 640x480 at 60fps. Kinda sucks if you ask me.
- pavel_lishin 8y agoSeems good enough for the kind of data they want to display; you're not going to be playing Battlefield on these.
- Geee 8y agoI don't see these things going anywhere without AR.
- deckar01 8y agoI disagree. They got rid of all the features that were creepy about Google Glass, focused the marketing on fashion, and narrowed the functionality to an easily usable UX. I suspect there are plenty of people that would pay $1k for these.
- anywhichway 8y agoI see them going to a similar place to smart watches. Both are fashion accessories that provide updates at a glance.
- servercobra 8y agoI'm curious where the display actually shows up in your eye line. One of the nice parts of Glass was the notifications never showed up directly in your line of sight, but up and to the right. Glass was a little too far out of the way, but I'm not sure I want them interfering with what I'm looking at.
- nine_k 8y agoThese may be great. I see a number of immediate uses for these, if I had them. Reading books or emails while on a train, without having to hold anything in my hands. Maybe even watching videos that I never have time to watch. Walking with a map in my FOV, without having to consult a phone. Taking phone calls, since it has a mic. It has a remote control, though a limited one, it seemingly allows for operation without taking your hand to your face; you can keep your hands in your pockets in cold weather.
- akavel 8y agoAnyone has any leaks or something regarding what's the pixel resolution of the display? I'm curious if it would be theoretically possible to display vim in some 8x8 font on this...
- pj_mukh 8y ago300x300px as per Verge[1] [1]:https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/10/23/18010468/north-focals-glasses-thalmic-labs https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/10/23/18010468/...
- akavel 8y agoCool, so seems not worse than a CGA at 320x200, if that shows up to be true! :) That's something I'm totally looking forward to hopefully be able to use at some point in future. Will probably take some time however till it trickles down to people with my levels of financial affordance. Also, till somebody hacks the software open for installing some kind of FOSS firmware. And finally, I have a sneaky suspicion, that the 3-sec-per-notification display time limit is there mainly to make the batteries last long enough on one charge to call it "a day" ;)
- zerof1l 8y agoThey are using MSM8909w processor which support resolution of up to 640x480. Since there are two screens, I think it would be at most 320x480px per screen.
- Tepix 8y agoNo SDK as of yet. Also, no price anywhere.
- Kpourdeilami 8y agoThey're $999 a pair AFAIK
- tw1010 8y agoI guess I've fallen to the other side of the chasm (to use Geoffrey Moore terminology), because my initial reaction to this was disinterest and like it wasn't for me. Thank god for early adopters.
- azinman2 8y agoWho here is pre-ordering these, and why?
- beaconstudios 8y agoI haven't yet pulled the trigger on this but I'm tempted. My memory is pretty bad and I tend to forget what I'm meant to be doing or what I had planned for the day. This would be a great help for keeping me on track throughout the day.
- otikik 8y agoI don't care about the glasses. The ring controller though - I have been looking for something like that for a while. I want something small and hands-free to control the slides while giving presentations. I had a Creative Ring Presenter but it died and I just really need "next slide / previous slide" buttons.
- DiabloD3 8y agoApparently these will have a $1k pricetag. Unfortunately, this product has already failed out of the gate just like Google Glass did: it was never the hokey backwards bulky design of the glasses that mattered... it was the price. Charge me, say, $200 to add this to frames that aren't thick plastic "hipster" glasses, then I'd buy it.
- danfolkes 8y agoThey chose models with dark hair because the huge and thick arms would be less visible.
- toast0 8y agoThe price isn't that important in the first round. $1k is not too much for some people to buy them and see if they're useful. If they're useful, the design will get reworked and the price could come down. It's not very reasonable to expect this to work with any pair of glasses, it's apparently projecting onto the lenses so geometry is important. $200 is probably a stretch for the non-glasses part of the deal too. Google glasses were expensive, a strange design, not very useful, and fairly creepy. But most of the software became Android Wear.
- fermienrico 8y agoAm I the only one who doesn't want - Digital Glasses, Google Glass - Smart assistants - IOT devices - Smart door locks - Internet enabled washing machines, refrigerators, ovens, etc. - Push to order dash buttons - Smart watch - Smart cameras/webcams These devices are solutions looking for a problem. The value proposition is overshadowed by loss of privacy, interruptions by social media, potential for security flaws, and loss of control by the end user, loss of repairability, amongst many other issues. They provide little benefit at the expense of aforementioned disadvantages. Apparently, the general public loves these and Alexa devices sell like hotcakes, Apple watch is a huge success and Google assistant is getting smarter everyday. I honestly am satisfied without smart things in life. I understand this might come across as a kind of anti-technology view of life, but I love technology! I just don't resonate with the IOT/Smart devices. This trend is everywhere from my label marker to John Deere tractors. What happens when Focal goes bankrupt and the device cannot connect to their cloud for security updates? Yep, they become normal glasses with thick frame with dead batteries. I want longevity, reliability and durability from my devices. Dieter Rams has a great view on this issue: https://www.hustwit.com/rams/ https://www.hustwit.com/rams/
- quirkot 8y agoIt takes a lot of detritus to fertilize the growth of good things
- bhauer 8y agoMaybe. But let's frame it differently. I want many of these things, but I want them to work on my own virtual private network—communicating exclusively with my other devices and only communicating off-network according to clear and obvious needs for external data (e.g., weather). The problem is today's third-party oriented cloud that assumes that all device-to-device communication requires a third-party intermediary. In an alternate timeline, an encrypted virtual private network shared by all devices would allow peer-to-peer on-network inter-device communication without a third-party eavesdropping. All too facile is the argument that a third-party cloud is required in order to handle the processing demands. This ignores the fact that it's relatively easy to have a personal "compute" node (it would be just a computer like any other after all) that you could run on your own private network (or even lease one from a data center). So yes, I want smart door locks, smart assistants, and all of these "Electric Dreams" gadgets. But I want them to serve me and not a third-party. In some of these spaces, there are viable options, but I want more companies to explore the opportunity of making money selling privacy-enabling omnipresent personal applications.
- swaycopy 8y agoNot sure what's more annoying: A) People looking at their phone/smart watch while I'm talking to them. B) People looking through me while fiddling with a ring on their finger. At least I can call people out on A...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sorryeh 8y agoAnyone notice how every single model has long hair. It looks like cool tech, but I can pretty much guarantee the large branches will look really really terrible on short haired/no hair folks... Maybe in a few years the tech will have gotten small enough to have normal looking branches
- 0x5345414e 8y agoThe biggest issue for me is that I hate wearing glasses, and "wearing" tech in general. I _hate_ carrying things around. I much prefer tech that is integrated into my environment (ex. Google Home, smart screens, etc.). Once we get to brain implants that can display artificial information in our visual field, I may reconsider.
- Sephr 8y agoA 28nm SoC in a severely battery-limited wearable including video output and speech-to-text screams "poor battery life with moderate to heavy use". I'm going to wait for the next-gen device built on a more modern manufacturing node (like TSMC N7/N7+).
- eljimmy 8y agoI don't wear glasses or contacts, so can't see myself ever buying these. I really like that finger ring controller though, pretty innovative. Slightly-off topic: Does anyone know what percentage of the population has vision that is impaired to the point where they require aids such as contacts or glasses?
- dsnuh 8y agoAbout 75% according to this: https://www.essilorusa.com/newsroom/vision-impact-institute-releases-study-on-corrective-lens-wearers-in-the-u-s https://www.essilorusa.com/newsroom/vision-impact-institute-...
- codeulike 8y agoI wonder if there's going to be a cheaper, 'ad-supported' version.
- andyidsinga 8y agolooks like no camera on the glasses? Guessing a camera will show up soon, or maybe on the loop device? (which might work ok you could preview the pic in the glasses)
- figers 8y agoWill SMS work with iPhones?
- ValleyOfTheMtns 8y agoI think before we tackle "smart glasses" from technical and social acceptance perspectives, we should explore "smart headphones". Perhaps it already exists, but while I'm walking around with my cordless Bose headphones I wonder why someone hasn't already made headphones that have dual-cameras in both ear pieces, gyroscopes, and accelerators built in. I think a lot of people would be interested in being able to take photos or motion stabilised videos from their perspective with the tap of a button. There have been times where I saw something interesting, took my phone out of my pocket to take a photo/video, but the moment had already passed. Walking around with camera enabled headphones would allow me to capture the moment instantly. I just need to look and shoot. But maybe I should just enjoy the moment for what it is, and let it pass, without feeling the need to record it...