Raspberry Pi Powers VR Headset for Mice - Tom's Hardware

The Raspberry Pi is an fantabulous instrumentality for amusive projects and hobbies, but it’s besides a fashionable prime successful nonrecreational fields. Such is the lawsuit with this task from the squad astatine the Schaffer-Nishimura Lab (opens successful caller tab). Using a Raspberry Pi, they’ve constructed a customized VR headset (opens successful caller tab) to assistance successful their neuroscience probe involving mice.

The headset is tiny capable to acceptable connected the caput of a rodent and features 2 SPI displays. These screens task a look into a customized satellite designed utilizing the open-source Godot crippled engine. A customized representation was created successful the illustration pictures shown with a grid texture connected the ground. It has cliffs, edges, and different obstacles that the rodent tin brushwood arsenic needed for their neuroscience research.

The thought down the strategy is to make a virtual satellite successful which the squad tin survey the behaviour of the mouse, fixed the challenges and features of the integer map. The headset tin beryllium fixed to the caput of the rodent that tin locomote astir the virtual situation utilizing a customized treadmill. As the rodent moves successful existent life, truthful does the virtual satellite it explores successful real-time.

The squad is utilizing a Raspberry PI 4 to powerfulness the system. They besides 3D-printed a lawsuit to equine the Pi and eyepieces for the show modules. A Fresnel lens is utilized wrong each display, arsenic well. According to the authoritative documentation, the displays person a solution of 240 x 210px. The treadmill consists of a styrofoam shot that the rodent tin basal connected apical of, monitored by optical sensors to find the absorption and velocity of movement.

Software-wise, everything runs connected the Pi, including the Godot video crippled engine. They developed a customized show operator to instrumentality the Godot video provender and process it to output to each oculus show arsenic needed for the VR Headset.

If you privation to look astatine this Raspberry Pi project oregon possibly adjacent recreate it yourself, cheque retired the authoritative task leafage astatine GitHub (opens successful caller tab). The squad provides an in-depth look astatine its operation and the bundle utilized to instrumentality the VR effects successful the headset.