Three seconds to send a bitmap? And I thought the Brilliant Monocle/Frame was slow! In the video it looks like you don't get more than a bar or two on-screen at a time... wouldn't any reasonably fast piece outpace the rate at which you can get the next bar on the device?
Yeah, it's a big deal for sure, I was bugging Mentra all hackathon to try and lower it, and also reached out to Even for suggestions (which Mentra is implementing). Regardless, I made it work and next gen hardware, firmware and software are all definitely going to be better for bitmaps
If they're using the same Nordic BLE chips everybody else is, there's just gonna be a cap on how quickly you can move stuff, I think.
I've found the display capabilities of the current gen smartglasses pretty disappointing. Yes they're less obtrusive, but the resolution is pitiful. I've found the Vufine a lot more useful, if more ridiculous looking.
Mentra here.
The Nordic MCU they use isn't actually the limiting factor, rather it's the glasses' firmware. For bitmaps from third party apps (like AugmentOS), they enforce 194 byte chunk sizes and do not support RLE. Their first-party app does not have these limitations. We're stuck with this problem for the G1, but we're working with hardware partners to make sure future glasses don't have these issues.
If I were designing around this limit, I would put enough memory to be able to store a nice buffer of bitmaps in either direction and then do sends that don't change what's currently displayed. I feel like that memory probably exists, I just don't have access to the firmware sadly