Sensors on Google Glass | Hacker News Reader

Sensors on Google Glass

thecodeartist.blogspot.com

63 pointscvs26820 comments

The "teardown" term here (in the rewritten title of the submission) is misleading, there seems to be no tearing down of hardware (as this term is usually understood), but rather digging up information from the published Glass kernel -- which is still a very interesting feat.

The sensor revolution continues. Gyroscope, accelerometer, compass, proximity sensors all packed in there with a wink sensor too. It's only missing a barometer, hydrometer and thermometer! Perhaps those will make it to a future production version of Glass.

Well i wouldn't say only. I can think of lots of other sensors that would be cool. Ultrasound proximity, laser based range or ir thermometer come to mind. The whole range of biosensors that are found in fitness gadgets like the Basis band would also be cool. Its also touching your temple, so it could even do EEG like the NeuroSky headsets. The possibilities for cool sensors are really unlimited.

Ha yes, I agree. There are so many things you can do even with a microphone which it obviously has. I wonder if it can hear things that the person wearing them can't hear?

I think we're all expecting the brain-computing interface to be a ways off, but when you mention that the Glass prototype is already touching your temple and packed full of sensors...they're just getting ready I guess.

EEG sensors for brain wave detection?

"Passthought" Glass unlocking? ;-)

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/04/70726?...

One of Neil Gaiman's episodes of Dr. Who, "The Doctors' Wife", features a thought-password. The password is "crimson, eleven, delight, petrichor" but you have to think of the concepts in order instead of saying them out loud.

Some phones have barometers for GPS (not sure how that works) so I wouldn't be surprised to see that. Perhaps Google are building their own weather center out of human drones.

Barometers measure pressure. And knowing the pressure at your location(assuming its atmospheric pressure and that U are not in a sealed chamber) one can calculate the altitude(mean height above sea-level). This further improves the accuracy of your location when using GPS to calculate Latitude and Longitude.

GPSs measure altitude too. Do you have any idea how a GPS works?

It's used for a quick fix and no you don't have altitude unless you have enough satellites.

The Galaxy Nexus uses the Bosch BMP180 barometric pressure sensor. This means you can get a faster GPS location with fewer satellites. That's the main motivation for it.

http://www.bosch-sensortec.com/homepage/products_3/environme...

Of course this thing is supposed to be connected to your phone, so do you really need all of those sensors on glass? How much does pressure vary between your face and your pocket? (I honestly don't know, feel free to tell me if you do). Orientation sensors make a lot of sense, but I would imagine they can get away with putting more sensors elsewhere.

Haha, before recent findings I was thinking of taping my TI SensorTag to my Google Glass - and that does have a barometer. I don't think most Android phones do, actually.

Also handy in that it would add some extra buttons that can be read by BLE as well...

One sensor that I have not seen mentioned anywhere is GPS. The pair I tried a few weeks ago had GPS built in and it worked when glass was not connected to a phone or WiFi.

Hmmm... True. I did miss the GPS. Well i was just looking for sensors in the sense that Android defines them. GPS is in a class of its own. There is indeed mention of some sort of "Elton" GPS. Well i am on my mobile now. Travelling home after a satisfying day's work. :P Will dig up more on it once i get home...

Its the Elton SiRFstarIV GSD4e. Check out its details in this video http://youtu.be/SRRKHDsoDvk where its demo-ed on a GPS-enabled wrist watch...

> A major win for TI (FWIW), considering that it has nonchalantly quit the mobile-SoC market citing a low RoI.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

TL;DR: Google Glass runs on Texas Instruments OMAP4430.

Google Glass has a built-in Accel, Gyro & Compass.

Google Glass has a "glasshub"

Google Glass has a "Proximity" sensor.

It's probably worth mentioning in any TL;DR of this that the so-called 'glasshub' reports winks as well as IR and proximity data (using the latter two technologies for the former-most?)

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