Cannot Buy Google Glass Where You Are? Try This Alternative

by Pete Daniel on 31 July 2014 · 3183 views

Google Glass is available in the United States but for everyone else in the world, it's not so easy to get hold of. There are also beginning to be laws and policies cropping up to ban the tech device making it less usable than perhaps it was originally intended.

DIY Inventing

One Indian inventor, Arvin Sanjeev, has taken it upon himself to do something about this inequity. He built himself an alternative to Glass for his personal use and recorded himself for YouTube viewers to see.

This Google Glass clone (not exactly a look-a-like) runs on Raspberry-Pi Linux powered cheap computing kit, with some voice recognition software and stuck together with some hardware on to a baseball cap with designer writing all over it. It's certainly not exactly something you'd want to be seen dead wearing, it's more akin to one of the Borg cyborgs in Star Trek after a battle with the Enterprise than it is to the sleek Glass. Having said that, shouldn't this young inventor get points for trying?

Made Using Available Hardware and Public Domain Software

What is impressive is that this is public domain software and accessible hardware kit. For anyone who enjoys tinkering with their home PC setup, this might be a fun little project to see if you can put together something more attractive than Arvin did and run Linux apps on it to your heart's content.

There is a 15 minute YouTube video about this “Smart Cap Head Mounted Display Unit”. The video demonstrates the first person video streaming and other features possible with the DIY product.