May 29th Update

I was hoping to have something more definitive to post this week about getting Glass, but it seems as though I'll have to wait until next week.  The good news is that last Wednesday Google announced that it has begun to send invitations to the contest winners.  They've told us that we will all get our invitation within two weeks from that point, and I've seen many of my fellow Explorers post about getting their invitation already.  I'm looking forward to getting mine.

In the interim, I've also begun to write some eye-tracking code using the OpenCV libraries.  What I've seen so far seems to indicate that this iteration of Glass does not have eye-tracking, so I'll need to modify my pair to perform the necessary functions.  I'm still confident that Google will add this functionality in soon given the patent they issued, and the potential it has to dramatically increase the usability of their hardware.  In the mean time however, I'll get something together that will work well enough for me to have a viable testing environment for the my application to drive the wheelchair.  This will be done by putting an off-the-shelf camera into the neck of Glass and writing my own eye-tracking library with OpenCV.

The OpenCV library is very powerful and has a great community.  Getting working eye-tracking code for a simple camera has proven really straightforward so far.  I hope to have some demos to post soon.

Getting Started

First and foremost, thank you to my contributors.  Due to a successful IndieGoGo campaign, I'm fully prepared to get started on this project.  So many people have shown such enthusiasm for this idea, that I'm really excited to get this into the hands of those who need it.  A huge source of that enthusiasm has come from Life Labs at United Cerebral Palsy.  They've been extremely supportive and helped add legitimacy to my campaign by throwing their support behind it.  Additionally, they've agreed to help advise me along the way and we're currently working together to get set up with an affiliate who may be able to get me access to a wheelchair for prototyping my designs.  I've been very grateful for their support in this endeavor.

I'm setting up this blog as a means for communicating with those interested in the project as the time goes on.  It will serve as a centralized location for anyone to get updates on the progress of my work, as well as read about the challenges and successes along the way.  Perhaps most importantly, this blog will help me set goals and keep focused on this project.  It can be difficult to stay true to a side project while also balancing work and life, so forcing myself to make weekly posts to this blog will help keep me on track.

Google still has not set a release date for the Explorer edition of Glass for the contest winners, but I'm eagerly waiting on their announcement   In the meantime I've been able to work off of what the other wave of Explorer's have posted and with the code Google has made available.  My first few posts will be just about working on code in anticipation of what we're getting, but hopefully soon I'll be able to work with Glass itself.  I look forward to hearing people's comments and suggestions along the way, and can't wait to start sharing my progress.