selfie wearing Brilliant Labs Frame glasses with prescription, clip-on and transition lenses

One of the advantages of Avanceé’s platform is the ability to explore and experiment as we desire. We can take a look at the edges of technology and pushed towards our own affairs. This has been the case with a few products from Brilliant Labs. First, we looked at the Monocle, a single lens and developer focused device. It was really a chance to look at something that was on the outright edge of heads up displays and using artificial intelligence-like applications. Brilliant Labs then came out with the Frame glasses. These are a slightly more polished version of what the monocle was. With the added ability to create a few more applications with a more common programming language to those who are able to do so. And to wear something that has a bit more public acceptance than Google Glass or even the first few Snapchat Spectacles models.

Most recently, Brilliant Labs collaborated with eye-wear company SmartBuyGlasses to offer clip-on prescription lenses for the Frame glasses. This allows those who might have some type of astigmatism, low focus, or some other types of visual disability to be able to use these glasses to shape how this technology might go forward. We see these glasses as a chance to probably reframe what it means for “prescription glasses“ to augment vision. It’s one thing to have a curved lens. It’s another thing when you can also augment that curved lens with something a bit more connected to the environment around you. But it’s not overwhelmingly taking over your vision/cognition.

We received the prescription lens clip-on some days ago, and published a few videos regarding its unboxing, and some of the initial use:

For those who may not have time to look at the video, what’s most impressive about these is how comfortable these glasses remain. For those persons who may wear glasses on a regular basis, you would be surprised at the lightness of Frame before putting on the clip one. With the clip-on, they are definitely heavier, but not unbearably so. The way that the clip is designed, it fits neatly against the glasses. And unless you have longer eyelashes, you should have no problem with the slightly closer lenses to your eyes. You may notice some fuzziness around the edges when you look to the ends of the glasses due to the clip-on lenses being slightly smaller than the lens cut out of the glasses themselves.

Connectivity to your tablet or mobile phone is provided through the Noa application (also available for Android) and Bluetooth. From there, it’s up to you to engage with the developer community to play with or build your own experiences.

These are not exactly the same as the Meta/Ray-Ban glasses. Those are a more polished in terms of the consumer application, and are geared towards those who have a definitive use of certain types of recording or interactions with Meta’s applications of LLMs (large language models). Frame is more for the developer community — those persons interested in understanding what it might take to do AI hardware, and who have an interest in some more personal/not connected aspects of using language, models, and connected devices (learn more in this video interview). Regardless of the lessons, connected hardware shares in some possible nefarious ideas and also some pretty empowering ones.

Example of this was recently shared by Brilliant Labs on YouTube. This is an experimental feature to idea of the types of usage. This case is also a template for developers to extend upon as they desire. One developer has a GitHub repository showing just how far devs have taken things.

For Avanceé, we will continue to push forward with this experiment of looking at glasses that do not just need a curved lens in order to augment one’s sight. The hardware within these does pose some notable challenges, as does physics itself. But, the success of the Brilliant Labs Frame is captured in exactly this moment. These are glasses which are designed for those persons who are willing to take a few pieces and build their own roads forward. They’re not exactly polished in the sense of something you might be used to from Apple, Garmin, etc. But there is something of an exciting journey that can be had with these glasses and the software tools that are being developed. It’s a journey worth taking we believe.

If you are interested in acquiring the Brilliant Labs Frame glasses, you can check out their website here. From that link, you will also be able to see the Developer documentation and the link to the Discord community where several projects are being shared.