
Focals by North - kgraves
https://bynorth.com
======
fermienrico
Am I the only one who doesn't want

\- Digital Glasses, Google Glass

\- Smart assistants

\- IOT devices

\- Smart door locks

\- Internet enabled washing machines, refrigerators, ovens, etc.

\- Push to order dash buttons

\- Smart watch

\- Smart cameras/webcams

These devices are solutions looking for a problem. The value proposition is
overshadowed by loss of privacy, interruptions by social media, potential for
security flaws, and loss of control by the end user, loss of repairability,
amongst many other issues. They provide little benefit at the expense of
aforementioned disadvantages.

Apparently, the general public loves these and Alexa devices sell like
hotcakes, Apple watch is a huge success and Google assistant is getting
smarter everyday.

I honestly am satisfied without smart things in life. I understand this might
come across as a kind of anti-technology view of life, but I love technology!
I just don't resonate with the IOT/Smart devices.

This trend is everywhere from my label marker to John Deere tractors. What
happens when Focal goes bankrupt and the device cannot connect to their cloud
for security updates? Yep, they become normal glasses with thick frame with
dead batteries. I want longevity, reliability and durability from my devices.
Dieter Rams has a great view on this issue:
[https://www.hustwit.com/rams/](https://www.hustwit.com/rams/)

~~~
biztos
I don't want a lot of those things, but I really want a couple of them in a
different form than currently available:

\- Smart _driving_ (sun|eye)glasses.

\- Smart plant waterers for when I'm out of town.

\- Something that does what Apple Watch does without displacing my real watch.

It seems I'm unlikely to see the second two -- AFAICT plant watering is stuck
in DIY mode, and it looks like the Apple Watch business is booming so
everybody will pile onto that design.

But I could imagine smart driving glasses actually happening, and I think the
road from "neat tool" to "annoying but required car UI" would be plenty long.

~~~
Eridrus
It seems like there are a tonne of smart plant watering things...
[https://www.postscapes.com/wireless-plant-
sensors/](https://www.postscapes.com/wireless-plant-sensors/)

~~~
biztos
Thanks for that link! I keep getting stuck on the "needs a dedicated tap"
problem but I will investigate further.

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chasing
They pose their models in such a way to hide it, but the temples of those
glasses (where all the tech lives, presumably) are huge. Which feel like
they'd both be distracting to wear and to look at someone else wearing.
(Although this is certainly an improvement over the Google Glasses design.)

I would believe that some people would like a little heads-up display in their
glasses. Not everyone. But some people. But I also would believe that the
glasses would need to look almost identical to normal glasses for such a thing
to take off. People don't want weird bulky shit strapped to their faces. Dark
and moody photos that hide the actual size of the things won't be enough.

~~~
baud147258
Sometime at parties I wish for a HUD that would show me people's name and the
last time I saw them. On the other hand I dislike wearing glasses at social
events, since I don't really need them.

~~~
rebuilder
I really don't look forward to trying to politely explain why I don't like
having my face uploaded into the facial recognition/person-tracking system
that will involve.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I _do_ look forward to our cyberpunk future where to "opt out" of certain
systems, you have to paint a certain mark on your face, or put a little QRCode
sticker on your cheek.

"Sorry, I'm only opted into Google Facemind and FacebookFace; I don't want to
be indexed by Amazon Visage."

~~~
erik_seaberg
People have begun studying makeup and hair styles that foil today's face
recognition in general: [https://cvdazzle.com/](https://cvdazzle.com/)

------
wlesieutre
If the Thalmic Labs name doesn't ring a bell, they're the former makers of the
Myo gesture control armband (which was just discontinued).

By all customer accounts I've seen it was an expensive gadget that never
worked reliably enough to be useful for anything, so hopefully they do better
with glasses.

~~~
relyio
I've tried the Myo a bunch of times, at hackathons and such. I think it was a
good product.

It actually worked.

The thing is that it wasn't _that_ useful and they never found product-market
fit. Yet, it was an avenue worth exploring.

If you are curious you can find used Myos on eBay, see for yourself. There is
a world between them a leap motion for example.

~~~
0x5345414e
I had one and every single person that tried it had issues with it in the
first few minutes. A hackathon is one thing, but it didn't work even close to
well enough to be a mainstream consumer product.

------
pg_bot
The thesis of this product seems to be that Google glass failed due to poor
design. I think that's an idea worth exploring and the execution here does
look promising, but I'll hold off on judgement until other people can review
the device. Here are my immediate, unsolicited, uncollected thoughts:

There are many issues that I worry about with this kind of device, but battery
safety and battery life are most important to me. Since you are strapping
lithium ion batteries to your head, it could be fatal if there is a
manufacturing defect or someone can remotely exploit the device. Getting the
battery right is likely going to make or break this product.

Social acceptance is yet another large hurdle. People do not take kindly to
surreptitious film making. We already have enough problems with people glued
to their phones and those are at least stored out of sight.

I would try my best to ditch the ring. This is the palm pilot stylus all over
again.

I was waiting for someone to do this, because I'd run the idea through my head
and was uncertain of the outcome. I'm not sure if you will succeed, but I
think you've made a decent product which is commendable. Good luck.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
I've read not too long ago that Google glass version 2.0, or enterprise
edition, was actually having some decent success/traction among workers.

~~~
zjacobi
Here's the Wired article about it: [https://www.wired.com/story/google-
glass-2-is-here/](https://www.wired.com/story/google-glass-2-is-here/)

Seems to give a huge productivity boost.

------
nine_k
These may be great. I see a number of _immediate_ uses for these, if I had
them.

Reading books or emails while on a train, without having to hold anything in
my hands. Maybe even watching videos that I never have time to watch.

Walking with a map in my FOV, without having to consult a phone.

Taking phone calls, since it has a mic.

It has a remote control, though a limited one, it seemingly allows for
operation without taking your hand to your face; you can keep your hands in
your pockets in cold weather.

~~~
fudged71
Besides video, all of your use cases are already functional with an audio
interface with AirPods for example.

~~~
nine_k
Do airpods put a screen before my eyes? Can they show a text, or line art?

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otikik
I don't care about the glasses.

The ring controller though - I have been looking for something like that for a
while. I want something small and hands-free to control the slides while
giving presentations. I had a Creative Ring Presenter but it died and I just
really need "next slide / previous slide" buttons.

------
lucvh
Useful specs are here:
[http://www.bynorth.com/tech](http://www.bynorth.com/tech)

~~~
zerof1l
They mention Qualcomm MSM8909w processor.
[https://www.qualcomm.com/products/msm8909w](https://www.qualcomm.com/products/msm8909w)
According to its specs it supports resolution of up to 640x480 at 60fps. Kinda
sucks if you ask me.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Seems good enough for the kind of data they want to display; you're not going
to be playing Battlefield on these.

------
servercobra
I'm curious where the display actually shows up in your eye line. One of the
nice parts of Glass was the notifications never showed up directly in your
line of sight, but up and to the right. Glass was a little too far out of the
way, but I'm not sure I want them interfering with what I'm looking at.

------
ValleyOfTheMtns
I think before we tackle "smart glasses" from technical and social acceptance
perspectives, we should explore "smart headphones". Perhaps it already exists,
but while I'm walking around with my cordless Bose headphones I wonder why
someone hasn't already made headphones that have dual-cameras in both ear
pieces, gyroscopes, and accelerators built in. I think a lot of people would
be interested in being able to take photos or motion stabilised videos from
their perspective with the tap of a button. There have been times where I saw
something interesting, took my phone out of my pocket to take a photo/video,
but the moment had already passed. Walking around with camera enabled
headphones would allow me to capture the moment instantly. I just need to look
and shoot.

But maybe I should just enjoy the moment for what it is, and let it pass,
without feeling the need to record it...

------
tw1010
I guess I've fallen to the other side of the chasm (to use Geoffrey Moore
terminology), because my initial reaction to this was disinterest and like it
wasn't for me. Thank god for early adopters.

------
akavel
Anyone has any leaks or something regarding what's the pixel resolution of the
display? I'm curious if it would be theoretically possible to display vim in
some 8x8 font on this...

~~~
pj_mukh
300x300px as per Verge[1]

[1]:[https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/10/23/18010468/...](https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/10/23/18010468/north-
focals-glasses-thalmic-labs)

~~~
akavel
Cool, so seems not worse than a CGA at 320x200, if that shows up to be true!
:) That's something I'm totally looking forward to hopefully be able to use at
some point in future. Will probably take some time however till it trickles
down to people with my levels of financial affordance. Also, till somebody
hacks the software open for installing some kind of FOSS firmware. And
finally, I have a sneaky suspicion, that the 3-sec-per-notification display
time limit is there mainly to make the batteries last long enough on one
charge to call it "a day" ;)

------
0x5345414e
The biggest issue for me is that I hate wearing glasses, and "wearing" tech in
general. I _hate_ carrying things around. I much prefer tech that is
integrated into my environment (ex. Google Home, smart screens, etc.). Once we
get to brain implants that can display artificial information in our visual
field, I may reconsider.

------
DiabloD3
Apparently these will have a $1k pricetag.

Unfortunately, this product has already failed out of the gate just like
Google Glass did: it was never the hokey backwards bulky design of the glasses
that mattered... it was the price.

Charge me, say, $200 to add this to frames that aren't thick plastic "hipster"
glasses, then I'd buy it.

~~~
toast0
The price isn't that important in the first round. $1k is not too much for
some people to buy them and see if they're useful.

If they're useful, the design will get reworked and the price could come down.
It's not very reasonable to expect this to work with any pair of glasses, it's
apparently projecting onto the lenses so geometry is important. $200 is
probably a stretch for the non-glasses part of the deal too.

Google glasses were expensive, a strange design, not very useful, and fairly
creepy. But most of the software became Android Wear.

------
eljimmy
I don't wear glasses or contacts, so can't see myself ever buying these. I
really like that finger ring controller though, pretty innovative.

Slightly-off topic: Does anyone know what percentage of the population has
vision that is impaired to the point where they require aids such as contacts
or glasses?

~~~
dsnuh
About 75% according to this: [https://www.essilorusa.com/newsroom/vision-
impact-institute-...](https://www.essilorusa.com/newsroom/vision-impact-
institute-releases-study-on-corrective-lens-wearers-in-the-u-s)

------
sorryeh
Anyone notice how every single model has long hair. It looks like cool tech,
but I can pretty much guarantee the large branches will look really really
terrible on short haired/no hair folks...

Maybe in a few years the tech will have gotten small enough to have normal
looking branches

------
Sephr
A 28nm SoC in a severely battery-limited wearable including video output and
speech-to-text screams "poor battery life with moderate to heavy use".

I'm going to wait for the next-gen device built on a more modern manufacturing
node (like TSMC N7/N7+).

~~~
abrichr
Can you please explain what you mean by "built on a more modern manufacturing
node"?

~~~
Sephr
By "more modern manufacturing node", I mean anything more energy-efficient
than the 28nm process node used to build the SoC in this device.

------
swaycopy
Not sure what's more annoying:

A) People looking at their phone/smart watch while I'm talking to them.

B) People looking through me while fiddling with a ring on their finger.

At least I can call people out on A...

------
azinman2
Who here is pre-ordering these, and why?

~~~
beaconstudios
I haven't yet pulled the trigger on this but I'm tempted. My memory is pretty
bad and I tend to forget what I'm meant to be doing or what I had planned for
the day. This would be a great help for keeping me on track throughout the
day.

------
codeulike
I wonder if there's going to be a cheaper, 'ad-supported' version.

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andyidsinga
looks like no camera on the glasses? Guessing a camera will show up soon, or
maybe on the loop device? (which might work ok you could preview the pic in
the glasses)

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Geee
I don't see these things going anywhere without AR.

~~~
deckar01
I disagree. They got rid of all the features that were creepy about Google
Glass, focused the marketing on fashion, and narrowed the functionality to an
easily usable UX. I suspect there are plenty of people that would pay $1k for
these.

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figers
Will SMS work with iPhones?

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Tepix
No SDK as of yet.

Also, no price anywhere.

~~~
Kpourdeilami
They're $999 a pair AFAIK

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throwaway987909
'information ... so you can have peace of mind" Piss off with this
manipulative marking crap. Saying this sort of thing hurts people's mental
health.

