LED mounted in a contact lens for possible virtual / augmented reality displays

Every so often, internet news aggregator sites run a story about a research group that put an LED into a contact lens, then inserted it into a rabbit's eye. I figured that I would try the same thing, but put the lens into my own eye. I accomplished this by laminating a coil of wire and an 0402 surface-mount LED between two ordinary soft contact lenses. I was hoping the lenses would stick to each other, but they did not, so I ended up fixing the edges together by pinching the plastic together with hot tweezers. This held well enough to capture a minute of video with the LED illuminated in my eye. For video purposes, I mounted the LED facing outward. An actual VR/AR display would have the LED facing inward.

I powered the LED by using a very primitive spark-gap transmitter built from a mechanical relay to send RF energy into a larger coil held near my eye. The large coil coupled the energy into the contact lens coil and pulsed the LED.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/11/sing...

http://www.cs.uic.edu/~kenyon/Papers/...

• Category

  Science & Technology

[jarikcbol]

You are quite possibly, an actual mad scientist. And also awesome.

[ddgg00]

does this make your eye twitch at 60 hertz?

[kaox44]

make a animated contact lens...that will make you a billion.

[Jay Smith]

I imagine some complicated micro fresnel-type lens for a decent display.

[headshot992]

I think the coil looks cooler than the little led, lol

[HUY Tran]

well super glue will work

[Gabe Alexander]

Must have taken some dextarity to get that smd component on there, I cant even solder through hole

[assistantto007]

Innovation can be dangerous, but at least you are taking all reasonable precautions. All ideas have a starting point. Congratulations on an interesting project.

[CrazyCubeCurious]

what about an 8-bit display? it seems like mario in my head wouldnt be too fun tho

[Val Fidelis]

I'm sorry but despite the effort you put into this, this is just stupid not to mention it's not very practical and it looks like it would be easy to damage/scratch your own lens

[Jamal Barksdale]

My common senses are tingling!

[Sep Nexus]

Seems annoying.

Annoying and fucking AWESOME