It’s been a few weeks since the last newsletter, but that doesn’t mean nothing has been happening.
Progress on eye tracking
First, I did some 3D printing with Moritz to retrofit an existing headset with mounts to hold our endoscopic cameras, this worked well…
https://www.eyeskills.org/another-iteration-of-our-eye-observation-open-hardware/
In parallel, Rene has managed to get the cameras working quite reliably in various versions of Android – quite a relief!
At the Hackademy it became clear to me, however, that we should and could start at an even lower and more accessible price point – by hacking the standard Google Cardboard V2 design to include a new “component” at its heart! https://www.eyeskills.org/hackademy-hacking-google-cardboard-v2/
Progress on UX
Our ultimate goal is to make EyeSkills usable and affordable for the world. It should educate and inform just as much as promoting experience and training. We made considerable progress identifying where to start… and I hope, we will be able to start getting bi-weekly prototypes out to those of you who have registered for beta-testing, to get your feedback in these critical early stages.
Development
Even if it was only a single line, it is a milestone. The first code merge has happened! Thanks for your input Rene!
Funding
At a personal level, I’m still unsure how best to move EyeSkills towards an economically self-sustaining global existence without sacrificing its principles to short-term thinking. My last round of contacts with traditional funders have convinced me that we will have to do things very differently indeed.
As the community continues to show an interest, and I look at the skills we have, I begin to think that we really could do this on our own.
At this point, I would like to give a heartfelt shout out and a thank you to Bradley Lane who donated 50 EUR towards our MoneyPool:
https://www.paypal.com/pools/c/8byPUuuQ1D
I am very grateful for your gesture of support.
Interesting meetings and new people
We have a big data specialist waiting for our go-ahead to get his hands dirty as a volunteer! With decades of experience at the coal-face of an internationally renowned cloud company, I think his input will be invaluable. More on this in the coming months….! 🙂
We also met with a leading neuroscientist from the Charite in Berlin – which led to some very interesting discussions on how to handle issues such as detached retinas.
… welcome to other new members of the community, I hope I’ll be introducing you soon 😉
Have a lovely day!
