The Case for Wearable Gaming
This wearable gaming PC is heavy, quirky, and impractical, but it's also a super cool hack.
What do you get when you cross wearable electronics with gaming? Nothing good, apparently. At least if you are somethingBAD Labs, that is. This YouTuber had previously made a TV head costume with an LED matrix display, and recently decided to take it to the next level in a new project. The goal was to turn it into a gaming PC that you wear on your head, because why not?
On the hardware front, an old laptop screen was chosen for the external-facing display. This was connected to a Raspberry Pi 4 single-board computer via an adapter board that converts the proprietary connection into a standard HDMI signal. A camera and small display were also included in the build. The components were all packed into an old CRT TV case that was sliced up to make it wearable on the head.
The Raspberry Pi 4 can do some gaming on its own, but it is better suited for retro gaming than anything modern. So to allow the device to play the latest and greatest games, somethingBAD Labs installed Sunshine on a host PC and Moonlight on the Raspberry Pi for streaming. The small internal display is for the wearer of the costume, while the large, external display shows everyone else what they are playing.
A microphone and speaker were installed to make it possible for the wearer of the costume to communicate in something other than a muffled, barely perceptible voice. And when not gaming, somethingBAD Labs created an animated, blinking eye model that is controlled by eye tracking software. Unfortunately, it proved to be too dark inside the TV helmet for this to work well, but swapping in an infrared camera could fix that in a future revision.
As you might expect, this costume was not entirely practical. A makeshift periscope was used to see outside of the helmet. It kind of worked, but was not exactly nice to work with. It was also very front-heavy, so the back had to be counterbalanced with a literal bag of rocks. This mostly just served to make the entire helmet really heavy. At least the battery only lasts about 90 minutes, so somethingBAD Labs has an excuse to take it off before too long.
This build is unquestionably weird and awkward, but it is also very cool. If you want to win a costume contest next year, this could be your winning ticket.
R&D, creativity, and building the next big thing you never knew you wanted are my specialties.