Apple Vision Pro = Ultimate Safety Goggles?

[julianthedragon]

Before someone else says it, I can’t afford it either.

But does this make sense? You now have a device that shows what’s in front of you, but it’s on a digital display in front of your eyes. In reality, your eyes are separated from the scene by a wall of components inside the headset.

Enter a 5W blue laser. You turn it on and it’s just like looking at it through a video. The color isn’t wavelength-accurate, but you can see the beam and your eyes are safe and sound while using the laser with full visibility in real time.

(You enjoy this for a moment before realizing that the cameras on your new device are the new eyes you are sworn to protect, lest you cut into your life savings for a replacement or worse, become Vision™-less. So you put safety glasses on the headset over the cameras. And the cycle continues)

 

[Viruzzz]

In theory maybe, but that kind of VR technology is veeery expensive for use as safety equipment when the glasses are an option, and you'll be at the mercy of battery life and you'll have a significant amount of weight hanging off the front of your face. I'm sure they have very impressive latency for the screen image, but it's never going to be 0.

I also wouldn't be surprised if you're working with intense lasers that the strength of the light is going to cause the camera to compensate by lowering the ISO to accomodate the extreme dynamic range with a very powerful light source, it might be very difficult to actually see.

 

[Ears and Eggs]

Damn, imagine when they equip an entire army with Vision Pros and Neuralink brain chips. Cyborg commandos ready for orbital battles and trench warfare on the moons of Pluto.

 

[RedCowboy]

I've done this with a cheap pair of VR goggles and a hobby cam without an IR cut filter, so I could view NIR as well.

 

[LSRFAQ]

A warning, not all cameras are isolated from the Eye...

Watch out for things like DSLR with moving shutters and direct viewing via lens . "Optically aided viewing" is very, very dangerous, and much different then using a CCD or CMOS with indirect viewing via electronics. Direct microscopes are particularly dangerous for looking at laser light. Binoculars and monoscopes / telescopes without cameras are bad too, even for a scattered reflection in some cases.



Other then that, good post!

If you need IR or have a very faint image, get an Aurora, it works well out to 1300 nm. https://www.sionyx.com/collections/aurora-night-vision-camera-range. Old Cameras wth HyperHad CCDs by Sony and a full size LCD are very good for bench and optical table work from mid UV to Near IR.... A good lens to choose for a modular camera is a close up zoom used for monitoring cash registers.

If possible, link the camera to a large monitor and wear safety glasses anyways. Around the nose diffraction into safety glasses is a thing, as is a situation with cameras with just one eyepiece.

Don't burn your CCD, around 3-5 mW into the lens is all it takes. Some CCD and CMOS cameras generally develop defects at a lower threshold then your eye, and Gigabuck video cameras have been burned at Lasershow events when mounted in the ceiling. Generally the more expensive the camera, the faster a hit from a scanning or direct laser burns pixels.

I had a grad student carve his initials into my old Videcon based tube camera once, they have a lower damage threshold then CCD. When he did damage by accidnet , he decided to,"Oh What the Heck" after totaling the camera. Laser used was a 4 mW HENE.

A cool and useful technique is to get a proper glass or metallic neutral OD filter, usually OD four or higher, and after careful power meter measurement to avoid burning the CCD, use the large, usually 1/2" or larger CCD to profile the beam. Advanced technique, don't blow up your CCD. In good quality cameras, the spacing and the size of pixels is known, making for easy measurement in software. OLD 1990s to early 2000s CCD security cameras are great for this, and NTSC/PAL Analog to USB adapters are cheap. Leave all the Pulnix TM-6s or TM-7s on Ebay for me, HA HA HA evil laugh...

In most cases, any protection is better then no protection, and watch out for "specular" reflection, which is particularly insidious.

Steve