May 20, 2003 - BostonPocketPC.com
Bluetooth Helping Keep an Eye on Things

If you have have kept your eye o­n bluetooth technology, Bluetooth now has a way to for you to keep your eye o­n electronic imaging. The MicroOptical Corporation, the leader in eyewear viewers for the portable electronics industry, will demonstrate its DV-1 Digital Viewer, a color eyewear system featuring Bluetooth wireless technology, May 20-22 in booth 645 at the Society for Information Display Conference in Baltimore, Md. The DV-1 viewer, which will be available to application providers and systems integrators in mid-June as a developer's kit, offers wireless, hands-free and head-up viewing of electronic devices.

"The DV-1 viewer is MicroOptical's first digital wireless eyewear viewer," said Mark Spitzer, CEO of MicroOptical. "The 12-bit qVGA color display, which is capable of handling both bit map and text input shows images from compatible PDAs and PCs via Bluetooth short-range wireless specification. Our developer's kit will allow the development community to evaluate the technology and create business and consumer applications that require mobility, situational awareness and privacy, such as public safety, inventory management and medical data viewing, all with the user untethered from the image source."

Bluetooth wireless technology is revolutionizing the personal connectivity market by providing freedom from wired connections and enabling links between mobile computers, mobile phones and portable handheld devices. The MicroOptical developer's kit includes a protocol for transmitting images over a Bluetooth serial link. A driver is used in the transmitting device to send the serialized image to the DV-1 viewer, which in turn receives the output signal from the Bluetooth-enabled electronic device and projects images through a patented optical system that allows the user to maintain natural vision and awareness of the environment. The monocular viewer, which clips o­n to either side of eyeglasses, gives the user the impression of a free-floating monitor. The DV-1 viewer is battery powered and readable in all lighting conditions.