Snapchat Spectacles have been missing a key element for certain users: prescription lenses. Until now, people who wear glasses were cut off from the buzzing wearable.
That’s no longer the case, as the good people at NYC-based lens manufacturer Rochester Optical are now offering to modify your Spectacles with a prescription solution to suit your needs.
The company made the announcement on its website, as spotted by Mashable. Prices start from $99 for a standard single-vision lens, and then increase based on lens type and options such as high-index ($149), photochromic or polarized lenses ($199). This means you may have to fork out more for your prescription lenses than you paid for the Spectacles, which retail at $130.
If you’re interested, all you have to do is place your order online and send off your Spectacles to Rochester Optical. The company claims its estimated processing time once frames are received is two to three days, plus one additional day for shipping.
Spectacles aren’t the first piece of connected eyewear the company has provided prescription solutions for. It already offers lenses for Google Glass, and insertable frames for VR and AR headsets such as the Microsoft Hololens.
“We’ve been working with heads-up displays for a long time, and Spectacles are just a form of smart glasses without the heads-up-display,” said Patrick Ho, CEO of Rochester Optical. “We already cut similar notches in lenses for Google Glass to accommodate the HUD, so cutting rounded notches in the lens corners to work around the Spectacle cameras is very similar.”
If you don’t yet own a pair of Spectacles, you can grab the wearable from a “snapbot” vending machine at a pop-up store in New York City, and at random, temporary locations in Los Angeles. You’ll have to be quick though, as they sell out fast, with people queuing from the early hours of the morning.
Samsung is making its Galaxy Watch sleep apnea tracking more useful than a simple warning. The upgraded system estimates how often breathing disturbances occur each hour, then sorts the result into three frequency levels.
There’s a catch for anyone holding onto an older model. Detailed results require Wear OS 7.0 or later, while watches stuck on older software will keep simpler alerts.
Not everyone can afford to hire a personal trainer. And let’s be honest, learning exercises from YouTube or the gym regulars isn’t exactly foolproof. We need a solution that is both affordable and accurate.
A research group at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN), led by Dr Biswajit Saha, has a solution. He created a bendy wearable sensor that works in the gym and for sports like tennis and swimming.