Coding without a laptop: Two weeks with AR glasses and Linux on Android

I have these same AR glasses and I really like them. The one downside is that they don't seem to handle heat too well--they'll crash if I run them in full sunlight for more than a few minutes. Also, they are not really AR--they are just a floating screen, and supposedly there is motion-tracking hardware, but no software. That's OK; a big floating screen that is fixed to my head is actually good.

In full sunlight I think this requires opacity. I lost the plastic cover for the lenses and I hacked up some cardboard thing.

These glasses have a really cool 3D side-by-side mode. The button activation is awkward, but it effectively turns this into a 3840x1280 screen. I couldn't really find much desktop support for this, but there are a few YouTube videos that are 16x9 SBS and they look really really cool. Unfortunately in this mode the desktop is then super-wide and spread across two eyes, so it's almost impossible to use a regular laptop with them. A 3D OS desktop would be killer on these!

I didn't try to go full mobile with a phone.

The cord is somewhat annoying, but I think I prefer it over a big stupid battery and some wireless protocol.

One wrinkle is that the interface is USB-C. The glasses need power, and though you can/could power them over HDMI, they don't support that. You need the device to support HDMI over USB-C and recognize the glasses as a display. The manufacturer offers a completely hilarious battery-powered HDMI-to-USB-C adapter. I have no idea why there is no powered solution; maybe there is.

> I have these same AR glasses and I really like them. The one downside is that they don't seem to handle heat too well--they'll crash if I run them in full sunlight for more than a few minutes.

Yup, I found laying my head on the left side where the cord comes it also causes them to overheat quick. My solution is to always lay on the right hand side of them and I actually put some stick on heatsinks on the left "leg" body that also really helps keep them more comfortably cool.

Also weird quirk with them and USB-C I've found.

If you plug them in to a macbook it's 50/50 if they work or just turn on the tint. If that happens, rotating the USB-C plug causes them to work.

Surprisingly: USB-C cables do have an orientation. It comes up a lot with these kinds of female-to-female USB-C cable extenders: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CTT1FJL6 (I have not used this one, it's just an example)

>Important Note: Ensure your USB-C cables support video transmission when using this coupler for video pass-through. If the connection doesn’t work initially, try reversing the orientation of the cable’s plug to ensure proper functionality, as USB-C protocols depend on connector orientation.

AFAICT not all cables are like this, but quite a few are, and broadly it appears that it's the sockets that are reversible and are simply hiding this - cables often just use one side. So when you bridge two cables like this, you need to make sure those (unmarked) sides line up.

So I suspect one side of your connection is either damaged or cheap (and didn't fully meet the reversible spec to save money).

(but only suspect, I haven't found a way to fully validate this)