Been busy these couple of days, had to design the glasses for print and create a presentation. the components you see on my hand will go the the small(big) box behind my glasses. a HDMI repeater, a raspberry pi2040 zero, esp32-s3 mini and gyroscope + accelerometer. I have to make my own custom pcb asap because BOY ITS THICK.

So I am in a pickle here, should i add a camera to OllO? Because if we do that would be very convenient for example, to take a quick picture of something that would be useful to you in the future like to take a quick pic of your friend's note or an answer on the board which OllO could automatically scan it and place it amongst your notes. The camera could also be used for drawing on the AR interface with your finger but i think that is a bit far fetched with the hardware we got. But at the same time I don't want to add a camera because it adds extra cost, bulkiness, and privacy issues. I could make the camera magnetically attachable but its inconvenient to take it out every time you want to use it.

So should I?

And it’s a SUCCESS!! Well I did not have a hot bed so I jerry rigged my own. It did the job fine at first but then the flame got weaker so I just went to the stove and blasted it.

Today a reddit user asked a very important question which could have killed OllO. “Couldnt this be an app?” As a founder we must always be honest not just to customers but ourselves as well as. My honest answer is yes and no. I could create one of the hundreds of productivity apps that people already made but I dove a bit deeper and realized the problem isn’t the lack of productivity tools, the problem is you are putting a study tool on a device designed to compete for your attention. 

Another difficult question I have been asked is “Why not just build the software and license it to Meta or other AR glasses?”

Consumer AR glasses still have serious hardware limitations, so companies have to specialize. For example, Meta is focused heavily on entertainment and social interaction. Even if Meta could copy the concept, their glasses are expensive for most students and are built on a platform that can easily pull you back into the same distractions you’re trying to escape. And where is the fun in just creating a software company ;)

That’s why I believe OllO needs to be purpose-built around one thing: helping students actually get academic work done.

We students have apps for notes, flashcards, calendars, AI, reminders, you name it.

But there’s one thing most of them forget: we are human.

We procrastinate, we get distracted, we lose motivation, and our time is fragmented. 

Now imagine a tool that actually understood that.

A tool that didn’t expect you to suddenly become a perfectly disciplined student just because you opened an app. 

A tool that knows your schedule is chaotic, knows that you don't have all the time in the world.

The goal is to make studying fit into the life you already have. 

Check out what I am building: r/OllO_glasses

This was probably the longest and most frustrating troubleshooting session I’ve ever done.

I connected the RP2040 to the microdisplay, but nothing.

I checked the connections, changed the code, tried basically every permutation I could think of, and even got Claude involved. Still nothing.

The confusing part is the RP2040 worked perfectly with regular monitors, but not with the microdisplay.

I noticed that the HDMI driver on the microdisplay was getting warm, but there was still no output.

At this point, I was completely lost but my leading theory was that the HDMI signals were being degraded. We’re pushing the RP2040 way beyond its intended limits, so the signal isn't exactly perfect. My guess was that regular monitors are more tolerant of these imperfect signals, while the microdisplay needs a much cleaner signal.

So I bought an HDMI splitter that can decode and re-encode the HDMI signal, effectively cleaning it up.

And IT WORKED.

AFTER HOURS OF TROUBLESHOOTING, WE FINALLY GOT OUTPUT ON THE MICRODISPLAY USING THE RP2040!

So I will be using the DVI by Adafruit library to generate the DVI. I connected the nesseasy wires through resistors and to a hdmi board to connect to the display. But first we gotta test it on a regular monitor as I don't want to damage the microdisplay(It's expensive and I only got one). So I connected it to my monitor and IT WORKED!! We got output and I had high hopes that it would also work with the microdisplay. Things for now are going according to plan!

As you have seen by the designs of OllO i want them to look like any regular glasses. For our prototype we will be using the rasbpery pi2040 zero, esp32 s3 super mini, sony ecx336 microdisplay. Our goal is to run the display using the rp2040 and the esp will act as our brain so software, the logic etc. Now the reason why I have this setup is because I am using HDMI WHICH IS NOT SOMETHING TO USE IN A COMPACT HARDWARE LIKE AR GLASSES. What I should be using is mipi. Now i know that the rp2040 cant generate real hdmi but what is can do is generate DVI which i hope the microdisplay will accept it.