The piezo ceramic actuators finally arrived. They are miniscule. For my first tests, I glued them to an aluminium plate and glued a mirror on top. I hope they work as intended, because I only have a few. The mirror I am using is a regular glass mirror, and has to be replaced with a dedicated laser mirror in the future, but it will be enough for testing purposes. I haven't made any calculations so it's very much possible that this design will not work at all. All I have to do now is to find a high voltage source.

For reflecting the laser from the glasses into the eye I  am using a cheap HUD foil. It is used to project your phone screen onto the windshield and reflect it into you eye.

I cut a circular piece from the foil and stuck it onto the glasses. The view is still more or less clear. However, I may need to come up with a solution because the reflection is not at the right angle to fill the entire lens. I have some ideas how to fix this issue though. For now I am still awaiting the laser diodes and most importantly the piezo elements.

To assess whether the foil is actually useful, I used a strong laser, to see how much light would get reflected. While the effect is not as strong as I had hoped, you can still see, that the reflected laser is much brighter, which means the projector requires less power and less of the image will be visible from the outside.

The brain

For now I will be using an ESP32-WROOM-32 board as a brain for the glasses. It comes with built-in wireless capabilities, but can also be used in low-power applications. I will be using the Arduino Framework because I am most familiar with it. The plan is to generate vector data on my phone and extract coordinates into an analog signal. I will probably use an audio protocoll like I2S to transfer the data to the ESP.

HV-Amplifier

I am planning to design a custom pcb that has a 100V DC-DC booster which I will try to turn into an analog voltage with a high voltage op-amp IC.

Battery

Depending on the required voltage I will use one or more small Li-Po batteries. I will also try to include a charging circuit and BMS, depending on the available space. I worry that the HV converter will require big capacitors and inductors, so the space will be tight.

As a basis for my AR glasses I have decided to use these old sunglasses I had laying around. The frame is wide enough to mount components onto and the aesthetic fits the cyberpunk style I am aiming for. I got these from Amazon for cheap a while ago, they used to have a second set of lenses with diffraction filters for nice effects, but I took them of to use for other projects.