Augmented Reality Project Utilizes The Nintendo DSi

January 25, 2026 by Lewin Day 6 Comments

[Bhaskar Das] has been tinkering with one of Nintendo’s more obscure handhelds, the DSi. The old-school console has been given a new job as part of an augmented reality app called AetherShell.

The concept is straightforward enough. The Nintendo DSi runs a small homebrew app which lets you use the stylus to make simple line drawings on the lower touchscreen. These drawings are then trucked out wirelessly as raw touch data via UDP packets, and fed into a ~~Gemini tool~~ geometric reconstruction script written in Python which transforms them into animation frames. A Gemini tool is used to classify what the drawings are in order for a future sound effects upgrade, too. These are then sent to an iPhone app, which uses ARKit APIs and the phone’s camera to display the animations embedded into the surrounding environment via augmented reality.

One might question the utility of this project, given that the iPhone itself has a touch screen you can draw on, too. It’s a fair question, and one without a real answer, beyond the fact that sometimes it’s really fun to play with an old console and do weird things with it. Plus, there just isn’t enough DSi homebrew out in the world. We love to see more.

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ABCCAD Is Voxels Meets LEGO In AR

November 6, 2025 by Tyler August 4 Comments

We get it, CAD software can be daunting to learn. Somehow [Boaztheostrich] found it so daunting he procrastinated his way into a AR voxel-based CAD app he calls “ABCCAD”, written in Godot for the Meta Quest 3.

The app is simplicity itself: pressing A or X on the controller spawns a cube, which you can place wherever you like in virtual space by moving the controller in real space. The trigger then saves the cube position. Grabbing a cube uses the controller’s grab buttons. You can even change colors (with B or Y), but like in OpenSCAD it appears that’s not actually going to have any effect on the exported STL. Check it out in action in the demo video embedded below.

As far as CAD applications go, this is as simplistic as it gets, but there’s a certain charm to its simplicity. It’s almost like virtual LEGO. Besides, TinkerCAD wasn’t much more complicated when it started out, and look at it now.

Sure, one could say if [Boaz] wanted to do CAD he’d have been better off putting the time into learning good old OpenSCAD or FreeCAD (which can now get you SolidWorks certs, apparently), but this is a fun little app that let him stretch his chops in Godot, another great open-source tool. ABCCAD is, itself, open-source under an MIT license.

We seem to have a paucity of posts under the Godot tag, so if you’ve got a hack that uses the open-source game engine, please send us a tip.

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Supercon 2024: Photonics/Optical Stack For Smart-Glasses

April 30, 2025 by Lewin Day 6 Comments

Smart glasses are a complicated technology to work with. The smart part is usually straightforward enough—microprocessors and software are perfectly well understood and easy to integrate into even very compact packages. It’s the glasses part that often proves challenging—figuring out the right optics to create a workable visual interface that sits mere millimeters from the eye.

Dev Kennedy is no stranger to this world. He came to the 2024 Hackaday Supercon to give a talk and educate us all on photonics, optical stacks, and the technology at play in the world of smart glasses.

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Octet Of ESP32s Lets You See WiFi Like Never Before

February 15, 2025 by Dan Maloney 15 Comments

Most of us see the world in a very narrow band of the EM spectrum. Sure, there are people with a genetic quirk that extends the range a bit into the UV, but it’s a ROYGBIV world for most of us. Unless, of course, you have something like this ESP32 antenna array, which gives you an augmented reality view of the WiFi world.

According to [Jeija], “ESPARGOS” consists of an antenna array board and a controller board. The antenna array has eight ESP32-S2FH4 microcontrollers and eight 2.4 GHz WiFi patch antennas spaced a half-wavelength apart in two dimensions. The ESP32s extract channel state information (CSI) from each packet they receive, sending it on to the controller board where another ESP32 streams them over Ethernet while providing the clock and phase reference signals needed to make the phased array work. This gives you all the information you need to calculate where a signal is coming from and how strong it is, which is used to plot a sort of heat map to overlay on a webcam image of the same scene.

The results are pretty cool. Walking through the field of view of the array, [Jeija]’s smartphone shines like a lantern, with very little perceptible lag between the WiFi and the visible light images. He’s also able to demonstrate reflection off metallic surfaces, penetration through the wall from the next room, and even outdoor scenes where the array shows how different surfaces reflect the signal. There’s also a demonstration of using multiple arrays to determine angle and time delay of arrival of a signal to precisely locate a moving WiFi source. It’s a little like a reverse LORAN system, albeit indoors and at a much shorter wavelength.

There’s a lot in this video and the accompanying documentation to unpack. We haven’t even gotten to the really cool stuff like using machine learning to see around corners by measuring reflected WiFi signals. ESPARGOS looks like it could be a really valuable tool across a lot of domains, and a heck of a lot of fun to play with too.

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[miko_tarik] wearing diy AR goggles in futuristic setting

Pi Zero To AR: Building DIY Augmented Reality Glasses

November 4, 2024 by Heidi Ulrich 36 Comments

If you’re into pushing tech boundaries from home, this one’s for you. Redditor [mi_kotalik] has crafted ‘Zero’, a custom pair of DIY augmented reality (AR) glasses using a Raspberry Pi Zero. Designed as an affordable, self-contained device for displaying simple AR functions, Zero allows him to experiment without breaking the bank. With features like video playback, Bluetooth audio, a teleprompter, and an image viewer, Zero is a testament to what can be done with determination and creativity on a budget. The original Reddit thread includes videos, a build log, and links to documentation on X, giving you an in-depth look into [mi_kotalik]’s journey. Take a sneak peek through the lens here.

Creating Zero wasn’t simple. From designing the frame in Tinkercad to experimenting with transparent PETG to print lenses (ultimately switching to resin-cast lenses), [mi_kotalik] faced plenty of challenges. By customizing SPI displays and optimizing them to 60 FPS, he achieved an impressive level of real-time responsiveness, allowing him to explore AR interactions like never before. While the Raspberry Pi Zero’s power is limited, [mi_kotalik] is already planning a V2 with a Compute Module 4 to enable 3D rendering, GPS, and spatial tracking.

Zero is an inspiring example for tinkerers hoping to make AR tech more accessible, especially after the fresh news of both Meta and Apple cancelling their attempts to venture in the world of AR. If you are into AR and eager to learn from an original project like this one, check out the full Reddit thread and explore Hackaday’s past coverage on augmented reality experiments.

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A Closer Peek At The Frame AR Glasses

June 19, 2024 by Donald Papp 11 Comments

The Frame AR glasses by Brilliant Labs, which contain a small display, are an entirely different approach to hacker-accessible and affordable AR glasses. [Karl Guttag] has shared his thoughts and analysis of how the Frame glasses work and are constructed, as usual leveraging his long years of industry experience as he analyzes consumer display devices.

It’s often said that in engineering, everything is a tradeoff. This is especially apparent in products like near-eye displays, and [Karl] discusses the Frame glasses’ tradeoffs while comparing and contrasting them with the choices other designs have made. He delves into the optical architecture, explaining its impact on the user experience and the different challenges of different optical designs.

The Frame glasses are Brilliant Labs’ second product with their first being the Monocle, an unusual and inventive sort of self-contained clip-on unit. Monocle’s hacker-accessible design and documentation really impressed us, and there’s a pretty clear lineage from Monocle to Frame as products. Frame are essentially a pair of glasses that incorporate a Monocle into one of the lenses, aiming to be able to act as a set of AI-empowered prescription glasses that include a small display.

We recommend reading the entire article for a full roundup, but the short version is that it looks like many of Frame’s design choices prioritize a functional device with low cost, low weight, using non-specialized and economical hardware and parts. This brings some disadvantages, such as a visible “eye glow” from the front due to display architecture, a visible seam between optical elements, and limited display brightness due to the optical setup. That being said, they aim to be hacker-accessible and open source, and are reasonably priced at 349 USD. If Monocle intrigued you, Frame seems to have many of the same bones.

Hackaday Links: February 18, 2024

February 18, 2024 by Dan Maloney 17 Comments

So it turns out that walking around with $4,000 worth of hardware on your head isn’t quite the peak technology experience that some people thought it would be. We’re talking about the recently released Apple Vision Pro headset, which early adopters are lining up in droves to return. Complaints run the gamut from totally foreseeable episodes of motion sickness to neck pain from supporting the heavy headset. Any eyeglass wearer can certainly attest to even lightweight frames and lenses becoming a burden by the end of the day. We can’t imagine what it would be like to wear a headset like that all day. Ergonomic woes aside, some people are feeling buyer’s remorse thanks to a lack of apps that do anything to justify the hefty price tag. The evidence for a wave of returns is mostly gleaned from social media posts, so it has to be taken with a grain of salt. We wouldn’t expect Apple to be too forthcoming with official return figures, though, so the ultimate proof of uptake will probably be how often you spot one in the wild. Apart from a few cities and only for the next few weeks, we suspect sightings will be few and far between.

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