Electronics and Augmented Reality

[Koz]

Earlier today, @immortl sent me down a rabbit hole when he mentioned a pro angler head connected FFS to augmented reality glasses. I read an article about that pro, Ed Loughran, and the article was very cryptic about he accomplished that:

 

"Loughran cobbled together a series of wires with a set of glasses bought on Amazon and shipped from a Chinese factory, which is as far as he was willing to go in describing them (he doesn’t want to give up secrets to competitors)."

 

So I dug a little deeper. Was he connecting directly to the head unit? That didn't make sense. But then I remembered the Garmin Active Captive app which would let me display FFS or sonar on my iPhone. This is accomplished by setting the head unit to create a WiFi network, connect your phone to that network, and then display the head unit screen on your phone. Easy.

 

Then I searched for iPhone compatible AR glasses, and in my case ones that allowed for prescription lenses or prescription lens inserts. I found glasses by XReal that do just that. Simply connect the glasses to your iPhone with a USB-C cable and that's it. The glasses allow you to control the darkness of the lenses, opacity of the AR display, and more.

 

But as I dug deeper, I found out I was not the only one with this idea. I found a YouTube video of someone doing this while ice fishing with FFS.

 

If you're a serious angler or a pro, this seems like a no brainer to use AR and FFS. You don't have to keep bobbing your head up and down looking at your line and the head unit. You can look straight ahead and see your line and everything around you and the FFS display at the same time. And BTW, the AR display is the equivalent of looking at a 130-inch screen. Think about that for a minute.

 

So instead of spending thousands on a large screen or head unit for your boat, you can buy a smaller FFS unit a lot cheaper and then by AR glasses for $300 - $500.

 

But with the Active Captain app your not limited to just projecting FFS. You can project down imaging, side imaging, maps, and whatever else your Garmin displays.

 

As someone who loves both fishing and technology, I find this incredibly exciting and in the future I might make the investment. But after just dumping a bunch of money on a new 9" Garmin head unit, the new LVS34 Livescope system, and a mounting pole for the transducer I need to cool my jets and put the brakes on spending for a while.

 

So, who's up for some AR fishing?

[Team9nine]

[Koz]

4 minutes ago, Team9nine said:

Now that would be funny! Thankfully, they look like this:

 

[HenryPF]

Yeah, I don't it is going to work as you think it would.

 

Water, direct sunlight and battery life.

 

The amount of light that comes in from your peripheral vision is not as immersive as goggles and is definitely not desirable for any fishing glasses. I wear wraparound style glasses for a reason. Polarization is going to be an issue.

 

It sounds cool though.

 

 

[casts_by_fly]

If humminbird had a similar app for display, I would try it for $300 in glasses. In a heartbeat. Tonight I was making casts behind me over my head (aka reverse) so I could line it up with the mega live and still watch the screen. I could land them, but not fish them that way. 

[Koz]

2 minutes ago, HenryPF said:

The amount of light that comes in from your peripheral vision is not as immersive as goggles and is definitely not desirable for any fishing glasses. I wear wraparound style glasses for a reason. Polarization is going to be an issue.

 

 

I'm going to disagree because you need to take into consideration how better AR glasses work. The first factor is immersion control which can be adjusted to reduce the light through the lenses. When you combine that with brightness, contrast, and traditional settings you won't even notice any peripheral light. 

 

As for being immersive, you don't want that at all. The idea is you are aware of your surroundings and not just the display. This is where AR is significantly different than VR.

 

As for polarization, it's not needed. You're not sight fishing - your FFS fishing.

[Tennessee Boy]

I imagine there will be many obstacles to overcome but the concept is feasible.  My initial concern would be the resolution of the glasses.  I looked up the XReel glasses and their resolution is 2 million pixels.  My fish finder is 860,000 pixels so to display it would take up 42% of the field of vision of the glasses.  Now if you switched to something like the Apple Vision Pro that has 23 million pixels it would be a different story.   I’m not sure I’m ready for Augmented reality on the water.  It seems a little dangerous.  You need to be aware of your surroundings.  You need to see the jet skis,  the stump you’re about to hit,  the wake that could make you lose your balance and fall in.  
 

The possibilities of what could be done with AR for fishing are mind blowing.  I wonder how long it will be before some company takes on the challenge.  Is the fishing market big enough to justify the cost of developing such a product?

[A-Jay]

9 hours ago, Team9nine said:

While I would never do it and certainly don't condone such an action,

have to imagine buzzing the tower close aboard at 60 + kts

while laying hard on an air horn, could have some entertainment value right here.

#don'tdoit

🤓

A-Jay

 

 

 

[Koz]

1 hour ago, Tennessee Boy said:

I imagine there will be many obstacles to overcome but the concept is feasible.  My initial concern would be the resolution of the glasses.  I looked up the XReel glasses and their resolution is 2 million pixels.  My fish finder is 860,000 pixels so to display it would take up 42% of the field of vision of the glasses.  Now if you switched to something like the Apple Vision Pro that has 23 million pixels it would be a different story.   I’m not sure I’m ready for Augmented reality on the water.  It seems a little dangerous.  You need to be aware of your surroundings.  You need to see the jet skis,  the stump you’re about to hit,  the wake that could make you lose your balance and fall in.  
 

The possibilities of what could be done with AR for fishing are mind blowing.  I wonder how long it will be before some company takes on the challenge.  Is the fishing market big enough to justify the cost of developing such a product?

With the AR glasses you set the opacity of the projected screen so it’s not like you have a blind spot. You can also set it to display in only one of the lenses.

 

I think it would be dumb to use them when you’re running the big motor, but I see no big issues when you’re using the trolling motor or Power Poled down.

 

The fact that you can set the opacity to see through the projection means you don’t obstruct your field of view.

[gim]

I honestly would worry about simply seeing normally.  There are things you need to see and watch for while you're in a boat.  Like other boats, shallow water, etc.  Kinda defeats the purpose of being safe on the water if you're fully enamored with reality goggles or shades.

[Tennessee Boy]

30 minutes ago, Koz said:

The fact that you can set the opacity to see through the projection means you don’t obstruct your field of view.

I guess you could get used to that.  You would have a suboptimal view of the sonar and the real world.  I think I would prefer the approach Apple has taken where you would place your virtual fish finder where you want it and make it the size you want.  I can’t see myself ever wearing Apple’s product on the water.

[Team9nine]

Just saw this posted elsewhere…

 

 

[Fishingmickey]

10 minutes ago, Team9nine said:

Just saw this posted elsewhere…

 

 

I watched the JonB you tube video last night. He is fishing with them, but he had lots of problems keeping the goggles connected to FFS.

FM

[Koz]

10 hours ago, Team9nine said:

Just saw this posted elsewhere…

 

 

I don’t like that setup at all. The first thing I don’t like is the bulky headset. I would prefer the ones that are more like sunglasses.

 

Second, the projected display is intrusive. I prefer something like this:

 

 

[immortl]

I think this would be a hell of a lot of fun to try out and putz around with.  In the overall scheme of the kayak cost and electronics cost, it's not all that much.  It's on my list but with things going on, I won't get around to it till later this summer.

 

I can see a lot of the points raised above, but understanding how Augmented Reality works vs Virtual Reality, I think it could be quite usable while still maintaining awareness of surroundings.  Discussion is good and there is lots of theorizing, but in my experience, arm chair theorizing often differs from real world experience.  It's worth testing things out when possible.

 

I fall back to my experience with multi gun shooting.  Arm chair pundits in general say manual pump action shotguns are the most reliable because they are manually cycled, nothing mechanical to gum up the works.  Yet in real life, under stress of a bad situation or stress of a timer running, the person themselves rush and fail to cycle fully and will short stroke it, ending up with an empty chamber.   I saw this happen over and over.  I'll take my inertia driven semi-auto Benelli over a pump action all day every day.  But I digress and this is a fishing forum.

 

When I find time to putter around with this and my Lowrance gear, I'll share my experience and results.  It may all be figured out by the time I get to it.

[Koz]

3 hours ago, immortl said:

I think this would be a hell of a lot of fun to try out and putz around with.  In the overall scheme of the kayak cost and electronics cost, it's not all that much.  It's on my list but with things going on, I won't get around to it till later this summer.

 

I can see a lot of the points raised above, but understanding how Augmented Reality works vs Virtual Reality, I think it could be quite usable while still maintaining awareness of surroundings.  Discussion is good and there is lots of theorizing, but in my experience, arm chair theorizing often differs from real world experience.  It's worth testing things out when possible.

 

I will probably experiment with this by this summer. I need to get an eye exam first because I’m sure that my prescription has changed.

 

I think it might be more difficult with the Lowrance. With Garmin, I already know I can output my FFS and sonar to the Active Captain app. I also know I can output what’s on my iphone screen to AR glasses. So my only question is how well it will perform.

 

Hopefully we both strike gold and update everyone here on BR.

[immortl]

8 hours ago, Koz said:

I will probably experiment with this by this summer. I need to get an eye exam first because I’m sure that my prescription has changed.

 

I think it might be more difficult with the Lowrance. With Garmin, I already know I can output my FFS and sonar to the Active Captain app. I also know I can output what’s on my iphone screen to AR glasses. So my only question is how well it will perform.

 

Hopefully we both strike gold and update everyone here on BR.

Looks like the Lowrance Link App will screen mirror via wifi to phones/tablets.  Looks like you can control the head unit via the 2nd screen device as well.  Possibilities....  

 

And I use an Android phone.  So between us, we ought to get Lowrance/Garmin and Apple/Android figured out.

 

It really does seem much more straightforward than the article let on...

[immortl]

Sitting on a loooong change window all day and night.  I've been poking around.

 

The AR glasses are powered by the phone.  I cannot find a 'splitter' USB C cable that sends out video/power AND takes in power to charge the phone.  Others have searched for similar for Samsung DEX use cases with portable USB C monitors but I have not found anyone that was successful.  

 

So far my ideas are either...

a) charge phone as necessary (I already have fast charge USB ports installed on the Kayak) when moving from spot to spot.

b) use a fast wireless charger rubber banded to the phone to charge phone while using the AR glasses.  One person reported doing this with a usb c travel monitor and the wireless charger was able to hold the phone charge steady.  I'm thinking the glasses ought not draw more power than a portable monitor and likely draw less.  Definitely something that would need to be tested.

[Koz]

5 hours ago, immortl said:

Sitting on a loooong change window all day and night.  I've been poking around.

 

The AR glasses are powered by the phone.  I cannot find a 'splitter' USB C cable that sends out video/power AND takes in power to charge the phone.  Others have searched for similar for Samsung DEX use cases with portable USB C monitors but I have not found anyone that was successful.  

 

So far my ideas are either...

a) charge phone as necessary (I already have fast charge USB ports installed on the Kayak) when moving from spot to spot.

b) use a fast wireless charger rubber banded to the phone to charge phone while using the AR glasses.  One person reported doing this with a usb c travel monitor and the wireless charger was able to hold the phone charge steady.  I'm thinking the glasses ought not draw more power than a portable monitor and likely draw less.  Definitely something that would need to be tested.

Another thing to try would be to put the phone in low power mode and see if the setup still works.

 

Oh - and here’s another rabbit hole item - check out XReal Beam. It creates a 330” spatial display. I’m not sure if that would work on a pitching kayak or boat. I need to dig deeper on this.

 

 

[padon]

no thanks.

[immortl]

11 hours ago, Koz said:

Another thing to try would be to put the phone in low power mode and see if the setup still works.

 

Oh - and here’s another rabbit hole item - check out XReal Beam. It creates a 330” spatial display. I’m not sure if that would work on a pitching kayak or boat. I need to dig deeper on this.

 

 

I thought the Beam deal was a wireless link... Guess that wouldn't make sense though, the glasses need to be powered.  I'll check it out, likely have more change windows coming up.  Everybody wants to upgrade all the things these days.

[Choporoz]

Another episode of 'Cool, or Creepy?'

 

My phone is paying good attention.  I just got a notification of a video short of cast to hookup using the bulky AR gear from someone goes by 'bendsandbanks', who I had never even heard of.

    Interesting enough to watch...but I have zero interest in participating at this point