John Floren

Home | Blog | Uses | Links
Back to blog archive

Posted 2012/12/22

Disassembling MyVu Shades 301 Video Glasses

A few years ago, I bought a pair of MyVu Shades video glasses for my senior design project.

MyVu Shades

They’re huge, bulky, look bad, and are uncomfortable to wear. With the intent of modifying them into a monocular head-mounted display, I disassembled the device and ended up with a pair of screen+lens assemblies. The process is pretty straightforward, just remove as many screws as possible, then cut the plastic nosepiece to separate the screens.

Individual screen+lens assembly

Now, I’ve lately become interested in the Eyetap device, which I believe would be constructed around the LCD screen alone rather than the screen+lens assembly. So I went a little further. I noticed some glue around what looked like the place where the screen and the lens join, so I cut most of it away with a knife. With gentle pressure, I was able to separate the lens from the screen.

Separated lens and screen

Thrilled at my success, I plugged the screen into the video input cable:

Blank output

Apologies for the poor image quality, but it doesn’t matter: all I saw was a blank white screen. Remembering something I had read about LCD monitors, I decided there must be a piece of polarizing film in the lens assembly. A quick look showed that yes, there appeared to be a piece of film tacked down by 4 small spots of glue.

Polarized film

I used a knife blade to carefully nick away the glue, then slipped the knife in at the edge of the film and gently pried it up. Once it was loose, I could use tweezers to grab the film.

Grabbing the film

By placing the film on top of the LCD screen, I was able to get an image–in this case, a live feed from a camera on my desk, pointed at a bottle of Worcestershire sauce (I had steak the other day).

Final result

Since the lens is removed, if I hold the screen close to my eye, I cannot focus on it. I am working now to determine if the “aremac” (“camera” spelled backwards) of an Eyetap device needs a lens, or if the way it is positioned with regard to the beamsplitter, eye, and sensor make that unnecessary.

Eyetop