Sony introduces SmartEyeglass Developer Edition SED-E1, pre-orders begin in UK and Germany

With the announcement of SmartEyeglass Developer Edition SED-E1, Sony is taking on Google Glass. SmartEyeglass is a transparent lens eyeware that can connect to an Android smartphone and superimpose relevant information from the phone on to the glasses i.e. information which is relevant to what the user is viewing through the glasses.

The SmartEyeglass will first launch in UK and Germany and pre-orders for it have already kicked off. It will be available in 10 countries by March this year. Sony has also released the SmartEyeglass SDK 1.0 for developers so that they can create apps for the glasses.

Sony’s smartglasses use holographic waveguide technology that gives the 3.0 mm super-thin augmented reality (AR) lenses a greater brightness and a high 85% transparency. There is no display in the front of your glasses like Google Glass that might obstruct your view. The lenses themselves offer binocular display with information visible clearly in any type of lighting conditions. The lenses have a monochrome 8-bit display that consumes less energy but gives high luminance of up to 1,000 cd/m2.

The SmartEyeglass is connected to the controller by a cable. The controller module connects wirelessly to your smartphone via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. It holds the speaker, microphone, NFC, battery and the touch sensor for controls. There are no controls in the glasses themselves like in Google Glass. The controller has a clip by which you can attach it to the lapel of your coat or jacket.

The smartglasses have a wide range of sensors including a 3MP CMOS image sensor, brightness sensor, gyroscope, accelerometer, electronic compass and a microphone. The GPS location is obtained from the smartphone to which it is connected. All these combine to provide the wearer information about their current task or surroundings. The glasses are compatible with smartphones running Android 4.4 or above.

The 3MP camera takes still photos and enables the augmented reality function by which glasses can see the surroundings and then the relevant information is presented to the viewer on the glass itself with the help of AR apps.

Initially, a few SmartEyeglass apps will be available on Google Play such as apps that give you access to Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, calendar, voice control and RSS. With the SDK available, developers can build innovative AR apps that can be useful for various purposes such as step by step instructional app for mechanics to assemble an engine when they are working on one. The smart eyeglass will be quite useful to people who have a deskless job. They can get instructions or information when they are moving around.

The video below shows how it works:

Sony will make available the SmartEyeglass Developer Edition SED-E1 to developers at developer.sonymobile.com in Japan, US, UK and Germany in March this year.

Enterprise customers located in France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands and Sweden will also be able to buy it from March onwards. As mentioned earlier, pre-orders have already started in UK and Germany for developers as well as enterprise customers.  The SmartEyeglass Developer Edition has a price tag of ¥ 100,000, $ 840, € 670 or £ 520 excluding taxes depending on the country it is sold in.

Sony’s SmartEyeglass have some great features but some may find its cable and the dangling controller module not-so-cool. Google Glass in comparison looks quite elegant. What do you think?

Source Sony

 

Sony introduces SmartEyeglass Developer Edition SED-E1, pre-orders begin in UK and Germany

Sony’s Single-Lens Display Module turns any Regular Glasses into Smart Glasses

Sony had stepped into the wearables segment with the announcement of its SmartEyeGlass, a transparent lens eyewear, back in September this year. Taking its smart eyewear development further, Sony has now introduced a compact and light-weight Single-Lens Display Module. This new module can be attached to any type of regular eyewear to convert it into smart glasses.

You can attach the Single-Lens Display Module to any glasses you are wearing including reading glasses, sun glasses or even ski goggles. The module will instantly display visual information on its Microdisplay and help you in your activity such as running, cycling and other sports.

Main components of the Single-Lens Display Module are:

• A 0.23-inch high resolution color OLED Microdisplay having a resolution of 640 x 400 pixels. It has a contrast ratio of over 10,000:1 with 100% sRGB coverage resulting in rich vibrant color images.


• A Micro-Optical unit that projects high quality images in any lighting conditions – dark indoors or sunny outdoors. The diagonal angle of view of the projected image gets converted to 13⁰ that is equivalent to the field view offered by a 16-inch monitor at a distance of 2 meters.


• A control board equipped with an ARM Cortex-A7 processor with capabilities equal to that of a smartphone. It also has Wi-Fi /g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 and a variety of sensors including accelerometer, electronics compass and touch sensor. Battery capacity is 400mAh.

The whole unit is light weight and weighs only 40g (Display arm – 22 g and secondary arm – 18 g). The module is easily attachable and detachable and the information is displayed in a small sub-window so that the field of vision is not obscured.

“This display module possesses the potential to enrich users’ lives in a variety of ways.” says Sony. “By simply attaching it to a pair of fashionable glasses, goggles, sunglasses or other type of eyewear, you can instantly gain access to visual information that adds a level of convenience to your everyday life.“

Sony plans to begin mass production of the Single-Lens Display Module next year and will also make SDKs available to partnering organizations. The concept model of the new module will be unveiled by Sony at CES 2015 with the title “SmartEyeGlass Attach!”

Source SONY

Sony’s Single-Lens Display Module turns any Regular Glasses into Smart Glasses

Sony announces SmartEyeglass, a transparent lens eyewear and its SDK preview

With the wearable market on an upswing, the Japanese tech major Sony has announced its latest gadget – a transparent lens eyewear, the SmartEyeglass. These smart glasses will provide a tough competition to Google Glass which is already in the market.

However, unlike Google Glass, Sony’s SmartEyeglass uses a different technology and offers a transparent display that does not obstruct the wearer’s vision. Information such as images, texts and symbols are superimposed on the glass and the user can see it directly on the glass in front of him. For this, SmartEyeglass uses several sensors such as CMOS image sensor, Gyroscope, accelerometer, brightness sensor, electronic compass and microphone. The device uses information from these sensors and the GPS location from the connected smartphone to provide relevant information to the user.

Using its hologram optics technology, Sony has developed a lens having an 85% transparency and a thickness of only 3 mm.  No half mirrors that can block the user’s vision have been used . Its monochrome display uses less energy compared to color display and gives a high luminance of up to 1000 cd/m2 enabling the user to read the text easily in any kind of environment. Other features of the SmartEyeglass include a 3MP camera for taking still pictures, VGA 640 x 480px for videos, speaker in the controller as well as Bluetooth v3.0 and Wi-Fi connectivity to the smartphone.

SmartEyeglass can be wirelessly connected to a smartphone running minimum Android 4.1 version. For the camera, you need Android 4.3 or a later version. Users wearing the device can view information on the glass without taking their eyes off whatever they are doing. They can get information about a person they are looking at, a recipe while cooking, know the way while walking etc.

Sony is planning to release many applications, products and services that will be useful to users in their day-to-day activities. Sony has also released the SmartEyeglass Software Development Kit (Developer Preview) for developers to their ideas and develop apps.

The company has provided some examples of applications that could be developed with the SmartEyeglass SDK. A few of them are given below:

And here is the promo video:

Sony announces SmartEyeglass, a transparent lens eyewear and its SDK preview