The first iterations of our #KickstarAR baby. Your ultra-flexible, portable AR development system, based on Project North Star.
(If you’re not familiar with Project North Star: it’s a brilliant open-source, community-driven AR platform with Unity & SteamVR integration powered by Ultraleap. It features 1440x1600px per eye displays at up to 120Hz and is built around the world’s most advanced optical hand-tracking technology.)
Join the Discord server to learn more and be part of the community!
Deck Mk.1
It’s here- well, almost, because we haven’t gotten the prototype assembled yet.
Actually, we did, of a previous version a couple of weeks ago.
It was so close to what we wanted, but a minor miscommunication led to it being about a centimeter taller than it need to be. We’ve modified the design a bit (see the renderings at the top of this section) and we’re very satisfied with the result!
Unexpectedly, we’ve found ourselves quite taken with the off-white color of the first prototype. Let us know if you agree.
The Deck Mk.1 is your modular deck. It comes with an Intel T261 and Leap Motion Controller, but the parts are easily swapped out and remixable with off-the-shelf components and modules. We’re still finalizing the hub system, but super excited to get a new prototype working so we can show you more!
Deck Mk.2
We’re still working on finalizing the design and getting the renderings out. But the Deck Mk.2 comes with Ultraleap’s next-generation embedded sensor, which can solidly track your hands within an amazing 180-degree hemispherical range!
Have we mentioned portable?
The second motherboard we’re evaluating is this one from Sapphire. We’re still working on the enclosure, but this is pretty much how it’s going to look if we end up using this one:
The Sapphire NP-FP5 motherboard can be powered at the 20V necessary to get 100W out of select USB-C power banks. It weighs less than 200g with RAM, wireless card, and SSD installed. It’s smaller and thinner, and it uses mini Display Port instead of full size, which is perfect for a wearable!
Some other exciting stuff!
This week, Microsoft announced that Ultraleap hand tracking is now an officially integrated part of the Mixed Reality Toolkit!
We pestered Microsoft’s Mixed Reality team & Ultraleap (Leap Motion at the time) on Twitter for this in August 2019. Yes, we’ve been waiting for this for almost a year.
What does this mean for us? It means that besides being an affordable, open-source alternative, Project North Star is now also a truly viable platform for prototyping experiences intended for deployment on HoloLens 2, and maybe even its successors.
Awesome stuff. Have you experimented with Intel NUC’s? I’ve owned 2 and found they pack alot of compute into a very small form factor, but aren’t inexpensive which is s consideration.
Hey Rob,
We’ve looked at Intel’s NUC offerings thoroughly, and even spoken with some of the NUC program senior executives. Wouldn’t it be awesome if they made a NUC, or better yet, a NUC compute element, with an affordable Ice Lake with Iris Plus? Unfortunately, none of the NUCs even come close the performance-per-watt, or really performance at all, of the AMD V1000 series. The motherboard we’re using now, the Sapphire NP-FP5, is packing a V1605B, which has an integrated Vega 8, which is about as powerful as a GTX650. With a base TDP of 15W. In a 4″x4″ NUC-style form factor. At a ridiculously low price. And we can run it at full power for a couple of hours off a $50 USB-C powerbank. Unless there’s some really radical shift in the landscape in the next few months, it’s hard to imagine shipping a headset/computer bundle with anything other than one of these or a very similar board.
Best,
Noah