activation email

[Corbin Das]

Moving this post to the correct section.

  Ever the glutton for punishment, I've been working on a way to have a functional HUD that fits into a Mando helmet. There's currently some setups for motorcycle helmets and a few versions of "smart glasses" out there, but I don't want this to cost a thousand bucks. Ideally, if it could be under $100.00, I'd be happy.

  To that end....... Here's a quick rendering of what I came up with. There's a 0.96" OLED screen sitting inside the helmet, at my left temple. It's slightly angled, because I have a fat head, but could face more forward, depending on your space. I purchased a cheap Chinese knockoff of a "Cobra" style sight/scope. It uses a collimated lens assembly, which is what I'm needing for this build. Think of a collimated lens as a magnifying glass with a reflective surface applied to one side.

  I CAREFULLY machined the lens housing off the body, and have it positioned in front of my left eye. Eventually, I'll make a better mount for it, but as a conceptual prototype, it's just cardboard and hot glue. Maybe something 3D printed, down the road. Perhaps even some sort of way to have the lens assembly pivot or lift out of the way when I'm not using it. Anyway.....

 I know this pic is small. If you click on the drawing, then right click and have it open in another tab, you should be able to enlarge it there.

 

An overhead view:

How it looks on the helmet. The animated display is visible to others, through my visor:

 

Here's a quick video. After several attempts, I finally got a decent shot of it. The camera kept trying to auto-focus on the cardboard and hot glue. Sorry for the fingerprints on the lens. LOL. One cool thing about a collimating lens though, the reflection stays in focus no matter how close or far away your eye is.

  Because of the OLED's position,  the HUD has the animated display off on the periphery of my view. Basically on the far left of my vision, but it's perfectly clear. There's about a quarter inch space below and to the inside of the display, to add indicator LEDs, strips of EL tape or LED bar graphs. They should be fully visible to the left eye. They'd appear to the right of the reflection, in the lens. Not sure what to add there, but I'll think of something.  Definitely open to suggestions. If the wires were set up a bit differently, I could perhaps have the OLED oriented in "landscape" rather than in "portrait", but it would take up more of your view.

 

A parts breakdown...

The animated OLED display is available here, on this forum: http://mandalorianmercs.org/forum/index.php?topic=124894.0

I'm using this one:

Here's an Airsoft knockoff of a collimated sight. I found one used, at a gun show, for $10.00, though I think they're 2 or 3 times that normally.  A "real" one (for an actual firearm) would be more. The flat surface (on the front, away from the eye) has a reflective surface, when viewed through the convex side of the lens. The combination of about 30% reflection and the magnifying power, gives clear reflection on something about 3 inches away, give or take.

 There's a couple other HUD concepts I'm still experimenting with. I'll add them to this thread. Please feel free to comment or offer suggestions. I have thick skin, so even if you want to point out how having a HUD that only you can see, and an eyepiece that could interfere with your vision will get old fast, feel free.  Believe me, I've had that conversation with myself several DOZEN times. LOL

[Corbin Das]

 There's a gentleman in the UK that makes scale collimator sights for FPV cameras in model RC airplanes. I sent him an email. I THINK it uses a really small crosshair that's backlit by an LED. Imagine a really small black paper/film with the crosshair clear, so the LED can illuminate it. That sits at the bottom of a tube, with a magnifying glass on the other end. Then they just have an angled section of reflective glass.

 I'm experimenting with something I made that's similar. The "crosshair" for the collimated sight I used in the HUD has 4 different designs, MICRO engraved into a section on really thin metal. An LED lights it up from behind and you see the reflection in the lens. I'm wanting something similar, with a bi-color LED that could maybe indicate an "armed" and a "firing" mode. Think of it as a sight for a toxic dart or something.

[Corbin Das]

 Another HUD idea I'm playing with is a wearable display, like a Vufine or similar setup. Basically, it's a small screen behind a magnifying lens. Not something you can see through, it's not a TRUE heads up display, but they're able to play any 720p color video, via an HDMI cable. Might be good for something like a small camera (night vision, rear view or drone camera?), GPS or compass, via a cable going to a smartphone,  or just something to watch videos with.  Not extremely practical for cosplay, but because the Vufine is portable, if you do other things, like fly drones, or ride mountain bikes, it can be useful for that.

 Not sure if the Vufine could sit close enough to the eye to be able to wear under a helmet. Might have to work more like the RF, where it'd set outside the visor. My understanding is it's like viewing a cellphone at about a foot away from your eye, though the screen is like only an inch wide. If you aren't going to use it for hiking, biking or drones though, it's probably not really something worth investing in, just for cosplay. That's just my opinion though. I could be wrong.

[Corbin Das]

 For those wanting the HUD to be viewable by others, at troops or whatever...... It's a lot easier for you. Because you don't have to get the image, video or animation focused to YOUR eye, you can just rig up a reflective piece of plastic or glass angled FORWARD to reflect towards spectators. I rigged up a fast and cheap version of this by making a cardboard "visor" with the same OLED display taped to it, but with the display pointing downward. Then it was just a matter of having a piece of clear plastic sheet for it to reflect onto.

 To that end, you could have a long strip of reflective sheet that's able to pull down from the visor, to have people see a reflection of whatever you have mounted. Like this:

If you click on the drawing, then right click and have it open in another tab, you should be able to enlarge it there.

[hereticdave]

That looks really cool Vod! Nice work 

[Corbin Das]

Thank you.

 I'm at a point now where I'm  starting to try and figure out how best to permanently mount things. Our Clan has a meetup in a couple weeks though and I'm torn on whether I should try and get everything mounted all pretty, or take it like it is and see if someone there might have an idea I hadn't thought of yet. Still brainstorming on what else I should have viewable in the eyepiece too.

[LightningLion]

Take the non-definitive option. Also, you might be able to find that red dot cheaper in Aliexpress, or even the lense alone.