ARH. Augmented Reality Helmet

This is a basic visual guide about how to make a very cheap AR helmet. And it works!!

Materials:

• fighter helmet
• 7″ flat screen + controller board (I bought the separate parts in the same electronics market).
• a webcam
• 5 meters USB extensor cable for the webcam (male-female)
• 5 meters VGA extensor cable for the screen (male-female)
• 5 meters power cable for the screen (male-female)
• one strong paper box (sparkfun delivery boxes works fine!)
• a lot of tape

Total amount: less than 100€ (I’m living in China so I’m lucky, I’m sure if I was in my country in Europe, the price should be higher).

Step One

Cut your box in order to have a clean area where to place the screen and the other to be able to see through.

Step Two

Find a friend to help you to attach the box to the helmet. Take care with the distance: the human eye needs arround 17 centimeters to focus and object.

Step Three

Attach the screen to the box. The most important attachments are the ones which attach the top side of the helmet with the front side of the box.

Step Four

Attach the controller board to the top of the box

Step Five

Connect the wires from the power supply device to the screen

Step Six

Attach the webcam in front side of the box, just after the screen.

Step Seven

Connect the VGA cable to your second monitor adaptor, the USB from the camera to the computer and power on the screen.

Step Eight

Place some patterns over the ground, table or walls, run your favorite AR app and enjoy a full AR experience!

Version 0.2.

Now the box is shorter than the previous version (still keeping the 17 cm distance from the eye to the screen).

The less distance to the screen the better feeling.

That’s how it looks inside:

TODO in next versions.

• wireless system
• include audio headsets
• improve the box using some plastic material
• …