As the PixyCam seems to be working and displaying on a screen via a laptop I took the next step of making some sort of headset to hold the display, as well as the sensor for measuring head turn and tilt. For the display I wanted something small enough to fit onto my head, so either a 3.5 inch display or 5 inch display, with a HDMI interface. Fortunately, due to the Raspberry Pi there are a number of suitable displays with a built-in HDMI interface. After some thought I decided to use a 5 inch display as this is about the same size as a mobile phone used in many low-cost VR headsets. I was originally going to purchase a cardboard headset piece but after some time looking I did find a plastic, better looking headset at only £2.00 extra so I decided to go with that. It also had a strap over the top of the head as well as the back of the head which I thought would be better for placing the sensor and holding the cables. So I used the SongMi Virtual Reality Glasses headset with a 5 inch 800x480 Raspberry Pi display with an HDMI interface.
Not really being familiar with displays for the Raspberry Pi I did not realise that it had the large connector on the back for directly connecting to the Raspberry Pi, which meant that it did not fit into the space at the front of the VR headset. So after a bit of drilling and filing I managed to get it to fit (mostly) and tried it out. Lots of other things about VR headsets I hadn't realised are that they come with protective film on all the transparent parts so on first use it all looks scratched. I also had to extend the focus to it's maximum and wear my glasses. To be honest, glasses do not really fit inside one of these VR headsets but I just about managed. Regretfully, somewhere in the fitting process the display stopped working. I'm not sure why but it might have been dropped or banged, or possibly bent. Whatever it was, it doesn't work anymore. Fortunately the company have agreed to replace it but as the deadline is short I have purchased another one which I hope will come before the end of the Electronic Toys Project14 competition. Before the display broke I did manage to get it working once and it does look like it might just about work. I could see the display quite clearly. I did have to close one eye, as yet another thing I had not realised about VR headsets is that they have a partition between the eyes which I assume is so that each eye sees half the display to produce a 3D effect. It is too late now to do anything about that as the display from the PixyCam is just one image - I will just have to carry on closing one eye, as well as hoping that the picture I want to look at is only in one half of the image!
Below is a video showing some aspects on the construction and then below that a selfie of me wearing the headset. I was pleased with the selfie as with the headset on you cannot see anything!
Dubbie
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