Hi everyone, been watching this thread for a couple of weeks, and figured I'd contribute to the DIY build cause... as I too am patiently waiting for december to arrive!
Must say really cool bunch of folks here, thanks for sharing all your knowledge, hopefully I can add to the brain pool.
I'm an fov junkie, I've had other vr hmd's all with complete crap 20-40 deg fov, nothing immersive ever, such a turn off for vr.. when oculus came about It really got me excited about vr again. Thanks Palmer!
ok enough talk, to the build!
I gave myself a few goals to hit for my build.
1. I wanted to make a design that was completely 3d printable on my ultimaker. The benefit I see from 3d printing is you have control of in-fill on the print, this allows you to make a object that is almost completely hollow yet structurally rigid, drastically reducing weight.
2. I wanted to have interchangable lens configurations, with all the posts about different optics, and me not being an optical expert, I wanted to be able to
easily experiment and swap out "lens plates"
3. did not want to have all the electronics strapped to my face, so made my own LVDS, USB, POWER --> HDMI breakout boards to make it easy to send all the
signals through HDMI without any soldering.
4. 120+ deg fov
Glad to say I have hit all the goals, my design is not completely finished there are a few things I want to tweek, add, change.. etc, but I figured this is a
good spot to share it with the community and get some feedback. I am going to post all my files in the next day or two on thingiverse if anyone wants to download and make their own.
I have made 3 interchangable lens plates, for testing of cheap 5x magnifer lenses, the recomended 50mm lenses, and my own variant of "leep on the cheap" (more on that a little later) I'm not quite sure how to accuratly measure fov, but from my estimate is the 50mm lenses give about 90+ deg fov, the cheap magnifiers were terrible, not sure but I quickly dropped them from the design... finally my modified leep design, gives 120+ deg, seems like a lot more actually, but I'm not positive I will post a video that compares the 3 perhaps somone can give me some idea on what I'm seeing fov wise..
I am currently using the hillcrest tracker, can't really say I'm sold on it other than it's tiny!, the mouse emulation mode is not great at all, but I'll reserve judgement untill I have some time to use their sdk and build my own app that directly talks to the tracker.
how about some pictures?
here's the final-ish design I came up with, I really wanted something a bit more organic but had to compromise a bit to make it 3d printer friendly and fit the build volume of the ultimaker.
what you don't see in the renders is the head mount, which I salvage from a 20$ welding mask. works like a charm.
and the final build....
went with the "eye of RA" egyptian theme on this one...
here's a picture showing the different lens plates, to swap plates you just loosen the four screws on the front and pop on the new lenses, easy..
this is the custom breakout board that makes it easy to send all data through hdmi, soldering 19 small wires sucks especially when
have to do it for both ends... this helps quite a lot, I'll post the gerber files of this as well. You can use a service such as itead studio, or batch pcb to get cheap
pcbs made.
MODIFIED "LEEP ON THE CHEAP"
I decided I liked the "leep" optics the best, what I needed to do though was grind down parts of the lens edges so the optics would fit properly with the
nose cutout and keep the space between lenses proper for the lcd width, I have made 3d printed holders that the large lenses fit into and allow you to grind down exactly what is needed for a perfect fit, takes about 5 min and turns out perfect.
well there ya go, for now... I still have lots of stuff to improve upon, unfortunately there is never enough time in the day! my current plan looks like the following.
1. setup a proper build log, I'm printing out a 2nd unit as I write this, going to properly document all steps involved now, I did a half ass job while building the first
one, since you try different things and I always forget to just even snap a simple picture along the way... and printing is the slow part, takes about 40 hours of printing per all parts needed...
2. finish design tweeks!, few things I want to add...
a. eye cups to block out exterior light... thinking of making a printed mold, then using prostetic grade silicone to cast a nice single piece that would block out all light.
b. mount for the ps3 move controller, (yup it's going to look silly as hell, but who cares..)
3. develop better tracking integration, I am going to most likely test out a version that uses the ps3 move controller, I've built a virtual camera setup in the past using the ps3 move so it's familiar, I also have it able to track about a 20'x20' volume as I really want position tracking as well as rotation tracking.
If anyone has any feedback, ideas, suggestions, questions, etc... feel free to ask, I'm going to try to help out as much as I can if anyone has issues with their build, now that I've gone though the process of building my own DIY rig.
here is a link to my current BOM, going to keep it updated but it's pretty much complete. >>
BOM<<
and if anyone is interested in the pinout configuration on the LCD Controller and HDMI cable, the above schematic and >>
this<< document should help you out.
- is it Jianbo Wu you have mailed ? he has always come back very quickly...
I wish I had access to a 3D Printer...
Very sweet build! The interchangeable optics are too cool. How noticeable is the added weight when using Leep?
andy
