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Camera
glasses aren’t a new idea, but Spectacles — the camera-equipped sunglasses from
the company that made Snap chat — are the kind of product that can open the
floodgates. One of the first ideas through those gates is being announced today
from a small company called Pogo Tec. But instead of making glasses with a
camera inside, Pogo Tec has gone a different, modular route.
The
company wants to replace the round support wire in the arms (or “temples”) of
glasses with a flat one, magnetize it, and then cut away part of the
surrounding plastic to expose the metal. They call this design “PogoTrack,” and
the company says it has partnered with “a number of glasses frame companies” to
incorporate the idea into their products.
An increasing number of companies
want to put technology on your face
PogoTec
won’t say who those partners are yet, but Richard Clompus, the company’s vice
president of communications, showed off about 30 different styles during a
short briefing last week. The whole point of this idea is that you’ll be able
to attach any one of a suite of PogoTec products to a pair of glasses without
being limited on design, or being left out in the cold if you wear prescription
lenses. And the first product PogoTec plans to make for these glasses is, of
course, a camera.
Pogo Tec
The
$129 camera, called PogoCam, is a tiny self-powered unit smaller than a tube of
lipstick. It has its own metal strip that magnetically attaches to any pair of
glasses with PogoTrack. The resulting package isn’t as seamless as Spectacles,
but it’s also not quite as alien (or alienating) as Google Glass.
The
biggest benefit of this kind of design is that you can easily remove the small
camera if you’re in a place or situation where people would feel uncomfortable
being recorded or photographed. And when you don’t want or need to use the
camera, you’re left with glasses that look almost just like any other “normal”
pair.
The camera’s specs leave a lot to be
desired
But
the size and portability also has big drawbacks. For one, there’s only so much
it will be capable of storing — Pogo Cam taps out after 100 photos or 12
10-second 720p video clips. It also has a 5-megapixel sensor, small by today’s
standards. And unlike Spectacles, there’s no wireless file transferring —
you’ll have to take the camera off the glasses and snap them into a small case
that plugs into your laptop. (Clomps says there will eventually be a
Bluetooth-enabled case.)
Pogo Tec
Pogo Tec
will be showing off working versions of Pogo Cam and announcing more about the
project at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, with the aim of releasing
everything in March or April. And the camera is just the first idea for Pogo Track
— more will be coming, according to Clomps.
“Glasses
are the oldest wearable platform, wearable device. They go back 700 years,” he
says. “We wanted to create a platform so we could put electronic wearable
around this neighborhood of vision, speech, and hearing, and not have them
detract from the fashion.”
Thousands
of people have spent the last month chasing a vending machine around the country and
lining up for hours at a pop-up store in New York in order to buy
Spectacles. Pogo Tec’s take on the idea is not nearly as sexy, and the
technology is limited. But if the company’s ties to the eye wear industry run as
deep as it promises, Pogo Tec has a chance to be the kind of brand that could be
pushing the idea of camera glasses (and other face-based technology) in places
like your local CVS.