3D VR with Head Tracking

Many of us can agree with Markus Opitz that video conferencing tends to be boring at times. What if, however, you could see the world on the other side of the camera in full stereoscopic 3D, and even control the direction where the camera(s) point? In this build, Opitz shows how he make a rig that does just that using a pair of ESP32-CAMs, along with two ESP8266 units and servos that handle camera orientation.

Here, the two ESP32-CAMs take video,and are arranged on perfboards, spaced at 6.5cm apart from each other to mimic the interpupillary distance between an adult's eyes. One ESP32-CAM acts as an access point, and generates a webpage where both video streams are embedded. Optiz then simply has to connect a smartphone or PC to that page, and a 3D image is presented on two side-by-side video feeds. A phone can be popped it into a VR headset for immersive viewing.

To take this a few steps further, Opitz's headset is augmented with an MPU-6050 IMU, which transmits position data to a second ESP8266 device. This controls the cameras’ orientation via a three-axis servo setup attached to the cameras, allowing them to mimic one’s head position and look around the room.

As shown in the video below, the system should make remote viewing more interesting and immersive. It’s also notable for its broad use of wireless communication between devices, which certainly saved quite a bit of wiring complication.