Ayyy a technical article, this one shall describe and document the process I had to follow to implement eye tracking hardware in my Index headset.

You should probably follow the official guide, but maybe this one shall be useful to someone else as troubleshooting reference.

07 Jan : ESP32s

The most straightforward step of the project, everything worked out the box : Uploading the firmware and connecting it to the PC software with the stock cameras.

12 Jan : IR Cameras

My silly bum did not think reading the documentation was important, you have to LIFT the connector to open it, not pull.

No big deal in the end, nothing broke and I got the ESPs and cameras to work

25 Jan : 3D Printed Parts

JLCPCB did the job, fast and quite cheaply. Parts are fine, but the camera mounts seem to have a little too much leeway in the attaching with the headset lenses. Nothing that can not be fixed, but I have not tried anything yet.

09 Feb : IR Led kit

Soldering is hard, I hope I did not fuck up any parts, my planning was suboptimal and I will have to do some more cables to link all the LEDs

I actually just needed some more practice, once I found the right way to do it.

It should all come together this week, but I won't be able to try it until next weekend, which in a way lets me iron out all problems and take some time to write this fine article.

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And it did all come together. It seems to be "working" even tho I need to iron things out with tracking stability and Avatar compatibility.

29 Feb : Resignation

It seems that this article took a while to write. The results have been hindered by the mouth tracking, which is running in parallel and using a different set of parameters which seeeeems to be colliding badly in the runa.

I have decided to put this part on the backburner for now as it is causing me more trouble than actual results. The whole physical assembly is proving to be pushing the limits of the headset and comfort.

On the software side, it seems that sending the video feed over the Index USB cable is causing some artifacting, if not crashing of the whole thing. I still need to be sure that it is, but recent days proved that to be mostly true.

In conclusion, for now, I will need to make VRC handle the eye "pupeetering" on my facetracked avatars, since mouthtracking has proven itself valuable and painless.

Bye bye blind Rofl, you won't be missed.