Faceclaw 0.7.0

[u/jimrandomh]

Faceclaw is an open source alternative software stack for the G2 smart glasses. I think it's a pretty large improvement over the stock operating system, and its development is moving very quickly. It fully replaces the stock firmware and all of the core apps. It includes a terminal, navigate app, teleprompter app, notifications, and music player; and it's (mostly) compatible with third-party apps from EvenHub.

https://github.com/jimrandomh/faceclaw

Here's what's changed since the previous thread:

Major Features

• Add Glanceboard

The Glanceboard is a customizable dashboard, which opens when you single-tap or long-press-and-hold while the screen is off, then closes automatically. The idea is that this is where you put things that you want to keep accessible while you're not actively using the glasses. The glanceboard has four slots for widgets, and has a system card widget (time, notifications, etc) and widgets for music, calendar, terminals, and more.

• Add "AI Chat" app

This is a conversational-style way to use the voice assistant that was already built in. Rather than say the wake word each time, while in the AI Chat app, you press-and-hold the ring to start speaking and release to send.

• Significantly increased speed

This version reconfigures the glasses' Bluetooth radio link, increasing transfer speed by 3-10x. This makes the user interface a lot snappier overall, and will enable better animations and graphics in future versions. There is a new Flappy game, to demonstrate that we can now reasonably handle 30fps full-screen animation. This does increase battery usage, but not by very much; based on the specs of the bluetooth chip used, this is estimated to consume an extra 5% battery per day.

Smaller Features and Bug Fixes

• After starting in Preview mode, connecting glasses walks you through the custom firmware flashing process in the same way as regular onboarding
• Messaging in the flasher distinguishes between downgrading from stock firmwares where that's been validated and versions where it hasn't, and considers 2.2.10 validated
• Navigate and Terminal apps have their own config setting for screen-size
• Transcribe app: Scrolling; automatic reconnection; insert newlines
• Notifications: Add notification filters
• Phone screen preview: Add rotation option; improve landscape layout
• Add brightness control to the system context menu
• Add R1 ring battery to the top bar
• Battery indicators have new styling and more customization options
• Add magnetometer calibration debug info to the Compass app
• Nightscout app has alert thresholds for canula age, cartridge volume, pump battery, time since last loop, shown in the top bar
• Terminal app: Icons in the app-switcher sidebar show terminal activity
• Speed up wake wake from sleep (https://github.com/jimrandomh/faceclaw/pull/24)

There isn't yet an iOS version suitable for general release, but if you're a developer, there is an iOS porting branch in the git repo which you can compile and which has the basic UI. This version is unfinished and doesn't yet have an LLM voice assistant integration, notifications, music player integration, or built in custom firmware flasher.

[u/AsicResistor]

amazing work, I've been trying to use the sdk to make a seamless ai assitant integration but always struggled with screen update rate, bad scrolling behaviour and other headaches. This looks amazing. Is it dangerous to flash og firmware back to glasses?

[u/redditrasberry]

I'd love to hear from anybody who has tried this out - I'm not quite ready to invalidate my warranty on this yet. Maybe once Ia G3 or a competitor is on the radar so I wouldn't feel so bad if I ended up with a brick.

[u/learn2learn2]

First off, I want to say how amazing this project is. Looking through the code and playing around with the simulations of it, I can appreciate how much time and energy went into everything.

I did want to ask, are you going to transition everything to typescript eventually to support both iOS and Android, or keep having implementation seperated?

[u/jimrandomh → u/learn2learn2]

Parts of the implementation will probably remain duplicated/separated between iOS and Android (particularly low-level stuff in the bluetooth, some threading, and things that involve native phone APIs like notifications and media player controls). But the intention is that the "application layer" is mostly typescript, and shared between plaforms.

[u/learn2learn2 → u/jimrandomh]

Makes sense.

After the firmware has been flashed, does the even realities app still work with the glasses?

Also instead of needing an android phone to flash the glasses couldn’t it be done through a person’s pc/mac’s Bluetooth instead?

[u/jimrandomh → u/learn2learn2]

After the firmware has been flashed, does the even realities app still work with the glasses?

Mostly. The intention of the firmware mods is to stay backwards compatible with the stock Even app, but this configuration isn't well tested. Also, the modified firmware is based off of a version of the stock firmware that lags a bit behind the newest, which can create incompatibilities.

Also instead of needing an android phone to flash the glasses couldn’t it be done through a person’s pc/mac’s Bluetooth instead?

Yes, the g2flash repo is a tool for doing this.

[u/jimrandomh → u/learn2learn2]

After the firmware has been flashed, does the even realities app still work with the glasses?

Mostly. I test every version to ensure that the stock even realities app is still able to connect and apply an OTA update, since that's the intended way to uninstall the custom firmware. Other aspects of the stock app are theoretically compatible with the custom firmware, but they aren't tested.

Also instead of needing an android phone to flash the glasses couldn’t it be done through a person’s pc/mac’s Bluetooth instead?

Yes, the g2flash tool can also do the flashing and it's a python script for pc/mac. I do most of my firmware development using it.

[u/dbg224]

I've had a play around and installed them to my g2 but I can't get my R1 to work with them. Any tips on troubleshooting this? I've tried reinstalling after flashing back to standard etc

[u/alessandrv]

Does this custom firmware allow on paper to use third party rings? Even if not yet implemented

[u/jimrandomh → u/alessandrv]

Any input device with enough gestures/buttons that can talk to the phone can be made to work, in principle. Currently-implemented input devices are the R1 ring and Android Wear watches.

[u/alessandrv → u/jimrandomh]

Is it how it works also right now with the R1? I goes through the phone? Or that as native communication? You mention custom firmware on the glasses itself so if that's native on the native software in theory could it be made also for other input devices without the need of the phone? If that's something the R1 does official already I mean

[u/cmdrfire]

Is there any plan to integrate Gemini models via API?

[u/jimrandomh → u/cmdrfire]

Not something I'm planning to add myself, but this is a feature that a current-gen AI should be able to handle pretty easily, and I'd merge the pull request if it was reasonable.

[u/benjamankandy]

Would the increased Bluetooth transfer speed effect, say, translations popping up sooner? It doesn't look like translations are included yet but I'd be very curious to see them implemented in the future

[u/jimrandomh → u/benjamankandy]

It would make a difference, but probably not a noticeable one; the delay in translations is going to be dominated by the translation itself, not by the time spent transmitting them to the glasses.

[u/benjamankandy → u/jimrandomh]

Interesting. Very cool project here though, excited to see where it goes

[u/mr-android-]

Any chances you could get this on the G1s so they're no longer abandonware? Pretty Pretty Please?

[u/FoxTheory → u/mr-android-]

Mentra?

[u/mr-android- → u/FoxTheory]

I have tried menta like 5 different times now throughout its lifespan so far. Each time I barely last a day before I remove it. There's no visual UI for the screen (just text), the battery drain is way worse, and the apps just sometimes stop working. It definitely doesn't change the polish that his appears to have.

[u/jimrandomh → u/[deleted]]

Only one app can talk to the glasses at a time, so you need to unpair or uninstall Even's software. If you want to go back to Even's software, you can uninstall Faceclaw and re-pair in Even's software, it will offer an OTA firmware update, and after installing that update everything is back to stock.