Webcam Earrings

Summary

As a fun way to develop my programming skills I decided to turn a pair of early 2000’s webcams into a pair of both functional and fashionable earrings. Using two webcams and a Raspberry Pi 5 - wearers can live stream their day to day to a webpage created for the project.The project is still a work in progress but a fully functional prototype has been made.

I came up with the idea for this project initially when I started working with OpenCV and facial recognition. The final prototype at the moment utilizes Node.JS and streams the content from the cameras via websockets.

While I was already familiar with streaming video feed over the web - I wasn’t familiar with jewelry making or what would be needed to make the cameras wearable. A big first step was figuring out if the cameras could be converted into a wearable and how this would work in a comfortable way.

The hardware for the current prototype includes:

  • 2 early 2000’s circular webcams connected via USB

  • A Raspberry Pi 5 for running the server and cameras.

  • A portable battery pack for powering the Pi and letting the earrings be fully mobile.

Current next steps include designing and printing better ear cuffs for the cameras to be attached too, reducing the size of the battery pack, and designing a bag for the PI to sit in while the earrings are in use.