Hey there, it’s Ritchie D here. If you follow my channel you’ll know that I’ve been getting into mobile virtual reality lately, and my last segment looked at the VR One from Zeiss. I’ll be honest, I didn’t get the VR One headset so I could jump into their ecosystem, I actually thought it would be a great Google Cardboard headset. Except that, well, it doesn’t come with Google Cardboard support. So let me know show you how to make this an awesome Google Cardboard headset!
I’ve been playing with Google Cardboard apps ever since I received my Dodocase version many months ago, and I’ve been hoping to have a more handsfree and higher quality headset to use with these apps. Of course recently Google cardboard has upped the ante with a revamped Cardboard app and an area dedicated to VR apps, particularly those compatible with the Google Cardboard platform, if you want to call with that, so it’s a really exciting time for VR.
One of the critical components for Google Cardboard is the “clicker”, the magnetic switch on the side that the smartphone detects that is used to open apps, pause movies, hover over objects to select and so forth. It’s a really vital part of the whole experience and many of the apps that Google promote require this function. Great example is Proton Pulse, which relies on this within the game for nearly everything.
So looking at the Google cardboard, and the way the inner and outer magnet works, I thought I might be able to replicate that on the VR One. So I went down to my local hardware store and bought a small pack of magnets, of different sizes.
I take the largest one, a rectangular magnet, put a small piece of sticky tape over it, and stick that on the inside of the VR One’s left hand side – and that’s a flat surface so it fits nicely. Then I add two more of the rectangular magnets to make sure there’s a strong enough magnetic field to work through the plastic, as opposed to cardboard.
Then, I take two circular magnets, around 22 mils in diameter, and place them on the outside of the VR headset. Viola – the two magnets stick nice and strong to the plastic because of the combined magnetic force of the three magnets on the inside of the shell. Now to test it – with some cardboard apps.
I can see myself getting a massive amount of mileage out of the VR One – not just because of lens quality and design, which are already impressive, but with this small mod I now have a comfortable, handsfree Google Cardboard headset to explore the ever expanding world of VR.
[…] about the emergence of virtual reality and 360 cameras. Aside from Google Cardboard (which I’ve documented many times), I’ve been most impressed with the combination of the Samsung Gear VR with their Galaxy S6 line […]