VR Headset Made with Camcorder Viewfinders and Raspberry Pi 4

Today’s VR goggles use compact LCD or OLED screens, which are ideal for something that needs to be light and compact. We take this kind of screen for granted, but it wasn’t that long ago that CRTs, or cathode ray tubes were the primary display method for moving pictures. These were neither compact nor light, with a few exceptions, including the viewfinders of '90s-era camcorders.

With that in mind, it would be possible to actually build a VR headset using a pair of viewfinders, a feat pulled off by Andy West, seen in element14's video below. His project starts out with the disassembly of a pair of non-functional camcorders, and when the viewfinders are taken off, they seem to be almost custom-built for such an application. While there is some bulk involved, the majority of the two units’ mass is positioned at 90° to its viewfinder. This means that the assembled unit is wide, but does not extend directly out from the eyes — an offset-mass situation that would likely be quite uncomfortable.

These new displays are attached to a heavily-modified phone VR assembly, powered by a Raspberry Pi 4 via a pair of HDMI to composite converters, and equipped with an LSM303DLHC IMU to detect movement. After some significant software hacking, West was able to create a demo of that allows him to scan a scene while blocks float towards him. The device might not beat an Oculus headset in terms of quality, but it’s an impressive fusion of old and new!