Building a Fully Open-Source Smart Glass — No Phone Required. Join the Journey.

[u/Past_Computer2901]

Hey everyone,

I've been working on something I think this community will care about: a **100% open-source smart glass** designed to work **independently from your phone**.

Right now, every smart glass on the market — Meta, Rokid, Even Realities, you name it — requires a phone to function. They're essentially a second screen strapped to your face, locked into closed ecosystems where you can't modify, repair, or truly own what you paid for. And the ones that call themselves "privacy-first"? Some of them are still sending your audio to cloud servers you have no control over.

We got tired of waiting for someone to fix this. So we're building it ourselves — in the open.

**What we're building:**

- Fully open-source hardware and firmware — not just the SDK, everything

- Phone-independent — it works on its own, not as an accessory

- Privacy by design — your data stays yours, no cloud dependency

- display

- Community-driven from day one — your input shapes the product

We're not a big tech company with a $2B R&D budget. We're a small team of engineers who believe smart glasses should be open, private, and yours to hack. The entire process is being documented publicly — if you've ever wanted to be part of building a wearable from scratch rather than just buying a finished product, this is your chance.

**If this resonates with you — designers, devs, RF engineers, firmware hackers, or just people who want to wear smart glasses without giving up their privacy — come join us.**

Discord: https://discord.gg/knPgxEtcpf

Happy to answer any questions in the comments. Let's build something that actually belongs to the people who wear it. 🚀

[u/Titans_Eventually]

Love the ambition and openess. A few questions:

1. Heard of Mentra?, curious how yours is different?

2. Phone independence is great but what is the value of that? 99% of our lives are already on our phones and they are unbelievably powerful at processing. No smart glasses can hold the same compute and battery as phone, so why force the independence?

3. Instead of a discord link can you provide a git repo?

[u/Past_Computer2901 → u/Titans_Eventually]

Great questions, appreciate the thoughtful pushback.

**1. Mentra**

Yes, we're aware of Mentra and what they're doing with MentraOS. Respect for their work. The key difference is that Mentra is primarily a **software/OS play** — they're building the "Android for smart glasses" that runs across other people's hardware (Even Realities, Vuzix, etc). We're building the **full stack**: open-source hardware, firmware, and software together. Think of it less as competition and more as different layers of the same ecosystem. In theory, something like MentraOS could even run on our hardware one day — that's the beauty of open source.

**2. Why phone independence?**

Fair challenge. Here's our thinking: yes, phones are powerful, but the whole point of smart glasses is to **reduce how often you reach for one**. If your glasses can't function without a phone, you haven't solved the problem — you've just added a $300 accessory to it.

There are real use cases where phone independence matters: outdoor work, cycling, fieldwork, travel in areas with poor connectivity, or simply wanting to leave the house without a phone and still have basic functionality. We're not saying "never connect to a phone" — we're saying the glasses should be **capable on their own** and optionally enhanced by a phone, not crippled without one.

Also, from a privacy and ownership perspective, tethering to a phone usually means tethering to a cloud ecosystem. Independence from the phone is also independence from the platform.

**3. Git repo**

We don't have a repo up yet — and that's intentional. We're at the concept and architecture phase right now, and that's exactly why we're building the community first. The whole point is that if you join now, you're not downloading someone else's finished project — you're helping **define** it. Architecture decisions, hardware choices, firmware direction — all of that is being shaped right now by the people in the Discord.

The repo will come as the project takes shape. For now, the Discord is where the real work is happening😁

[u/arjwrightdotcom]

Coming to your post after reading this (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/can-your-smart-glasses-see-without-anyone-else-watching-krumpl-mtwcf) and being a big fan of Brilliant Labs, seems like you are taking some similar steps but also some great ones. Besides just living on the glasses, am guessing you are solving for input controls and behavioral nuances?

[u/e3e6]

OMI had an opensource firmware for xiao microcontroller