Building a head mount for the Private Eye

Display mounts have typically been the most aggravating feature of the wearable. A comfortable mount is essential for using the system for long periods of time. The two types we use are glasses-based mounts and hat-based mounts. There is also the standard boom mount that comes with the Private Eye.

Constructing display mounts

Critiques of mounting styles

Standard mount for Private Eye

The mount provided by Reflection Tech/Phoenix is, literally, painful. This boom mount stays in place by providing pressure on the head. This pressure alone can cause headaches. In addition, the display bounces around too much due to the boom mount and takes too long to readjust (too many degrees of freedom).

Glasses and hat-mounts:

The hat mount looks a little more 'normal' to wear, but isn't very stable or comfortable to look at for long periods of time without adjusting. By angling the display, the PE be viewed without restricting the entire field of view in that eye. You can make normal eye-contact with both eyes while wearing hte hat-mount, but have to look up and to the side to read the screen.

While giving a more pronounced 'cyborg' look, glasses-based mounts are more commonly used around the lab. By using form-fitting safety glasses, this type of mount is extremely stable -- reading text while walking is commonplace. The Private Eye will fill almost all of the field of view in one eye -- however the virtual image will fuse with normal vision from the uncovered eye. This will give the effect of the PE display superimposed over normal vision.


Two eyed view with glasses


"Fused" effect that you actually see


Last modified: Thu Sep 4 15:33:49 EDT 1997