MentraOS – open-source Smart glasses OS

Store requiring an account, and apps actually running on their servers.

This is definitely not the smart glasses operating system to converge on.

If there's anything worthwhile in it I'd advise interested people in forking it, and turning it into an actually open open-source operating system.

Hey thanks for commenting. Developers host their own apps - they don't run on our servers. See:

https://docs.mentra.glass/ubuntu-deployment

https://docs.mentra.glass/railway-deployment

In your opinion, what do you think should change to make this an "actual" open source OS?

Ok, although everything seems to go through the "MentraOS Cloud" (https://docs.mentra.glass/core-concepts).

It's not that the OS is not open source, it's that it seems a privacy nightmare; the fact that the app also runs on the developers' servers just adds to the amount of parties you need to trust. That you and the people around you need to trust, actually.

And the company has strong connections to China, by the way.

The system is also not very open, if the users are forced to use your store.

It seems unlikely that there's much to be salvaged, given that you're using AOSP as the actual operating system.

MentraOS allows multiple apps to run at the same time and access context at the same time by running apps in the cloud.

This is enabled by relay servers. You can use Mentra's relay server, or host your own.

This is the architecture that we use and recommend so multiple apps can run at once and access powerful AI, while saving your phones battery. If you need to run offline or on the edge, we're working on the Mentra Edge SDK so you can skip the cloud, but it has downsides - only 1 app at a time.

Remember, every app on your phone is communicating with its own backend - which you have to trust. This isn't different.

Users aren't forced to use the store. You can self host a relay server, self host a store, etc.

Are self-hosted relay servers a new feature? I don't remember seeing those when I first looked into Mentra. How difficult is it to set up?

I get the trade off. Glasses may some not simply have enough space for hardware. I briefly debated attaching a relay ( some of the processing for what I had in mind could be done with a simple raspberry ).