The CardBoard itself

  The Google VR kit I have done is made of corrugated cardboard of a B flute size instead of E flute size in the original.
  Meaning the design changed a bit for the thickness of the cardboard and a lot for the size of my phone, Note 3, which I wanted inside my VR glasses, no side openings.

  Here are the original blueprints, and here (will publish later) are my blueprints, modified to acomodate a Note 3.

  I printed all on paper, glued paper on cardboard with liquid glue - not very good move, as the liquid glue made all paper crease and on top of that I has to wait the glue to dry, as the wet paper teared badly and ruining the contour I was following with a brand new paper cutter. I used a absolutely new blade and by the end was kinda dull for this kind of cardboard.

  Using a B flute cardboard, from page one I have deleted 2 of the folds (left and right) and kept only the center one.
  Even though I made the cuts as precise as I could using my bare hand, the lenses fitted perfectly in their holes but did not stay, so a quick fix was to use some labels to fix them.

First blueprint 'assembled':

And then the CardBoard, front, camera not usable yet:

CardBoard, back, lenses do fit but not very tight:

The CardBoard itself is very light, the phone gives the weight.
Some elastic band will be enough to keep it on the head, still some padding to the forehead and cheeks might be necessary.

Look, there is an elephant on my VR kit!



wip

Materials

  So, scrapping Googles list of materials, I went shopping and got these:

  Cardboard - I did not really shop for this, I got some wallpaper box to use which was 3-walled, corrugated and painted, so my VR kit looks pretty... bad.
Google's kit looks bad in brown cardboard, but at least is one (bad) color, not 7 like mine. So, Google's kit looks way better than mine, not to mention all the cuts done by hand in mine.
  Also, I got B Flute (thicker) cardboard instead of E flute, so design suffered even more modifications.
  Details of what I did here.


  Lenses  - now this was some experience. I thought that a specialist would give a really great deal of help here, but I was wrong. I asked for the 40 mm lenses and I got another question: how many diopters? Here I was totally unprepared, I pulled out my phone, found some Wikipedia formula and got some 25 diopters for mine. Really? Seemed much to me, I asked if they have any, but already caught wrong footed the guy was not really fond for helping me. I insisted for some prices, got some more stupid questions - only made to make me miserable - like + or -? Well, I left without getting much help and not learned my lesson so I tried a second optician and there I got the idea that they are not particularly thrilled to sell me a lens (or two, for that matter) without any other added cost to it, as mounting in a frame, or a frame itself - not much help here too.
 
  Got an idea - what about lenses used to read? Or those used by numismatists? Or guys that collect stamps?
Great idea, found a Chinese shop that had a lens like that which happened to be an assemble of 2 lenses, each 40 mm focal - problem solved! After the cardboard itself, this was the biggest problem.

  The lenses I've been using are from a LED 40x25mm illuminated loupe, which looks like this:

  There are two lenses, about 25 mm diameter and 40 mm focal length.


 
  Magnets - skipped for the moment, as those that sell magnets were not in my way these days. Still, they are absolutely necessary, as this is the very button used to do about anything while using the Google VR.

  There is a workaround - as Google suggested - a copper band which will touch the screen somewhere out of the field of view, any margin will do, but I have to have it reaching the outside of the box. Skipped. I will go for the magnets.


  Velcro - well, as I progressed with my cardboard, I used tape to seal the freshly cut margins, I realized that tape will stick to tape and unstick when necessary, so tape has replaced velcro. Anyway, the velcro I had access to was way to strong for the cardboard that I had at hand.


  Rubber band - no more necessary as I modified the design to fit my phone (Note 3) - my phone sits now inside my cardboard, no danger of falling whatsoever.
A problem might be that my phone heats up a little bit while doing 3D, so I might want to address this some day. Well, the original design is not much better in this aspect, as only the very top and bottom gets left outside - which I don't think do help much in cooling.


  NFC tag (optional) - I have some NFC tags around, I just have to dig for them.  
 But the tag is a pretty neat feat, as I slipped the phone so many times into my kit just to have it pulled out to launch the app and the place it again inside the kit. Avoidable, the NFC tag should have been installed. So, the tag is a must.



 

Yo all!

GOOGLE I/O shown me an amazing device that I wanted immediately.

The Cardboard

Which looks like this:

or this, once assembled:

  And which is a very cheap VR kit in which the active part - the most important and most expensive - is the phone I already own. If I am satisfied with the resolution of my phone, that I have to be satisfied with the resolution of my VR kit.

  I did not attend the GOOGLE I/O, where I would be getting one of these for free, but Google is kind enough to provide blueprints for free.
Even more, it provides web links to all the materials that you need for this.

  I was watching Oculus Rift from the very beginning and knowing how unsatisfying a optical/electronic device like this would be in its firsts editions I waited for really satisfied users before even considering buying one.
  Naturally, the Google VR looked in an instant more attractive because:

   - made out of cardboard it would be really cheap
   - out of cardboard I would try to make it myself
   - the active part in this device is my own phone, so my VR will not deprecate faster than my phone and the eventual upgrade will not cost anything but will upgrade the VR too
   - other components would have to be really accessible - and they were.
   - I tend to fav phone to laptop more and more, so I would like my VR kit working with my phone. But there is a link necessary in between the VR and phone, whereas here, the VR is the phone - a lot of headache is already gone!

So if I draw a line here, I can say that I have already 5 (really big) reasons to skip waiting for Oculus and go for the Google VR.

There might be one, when I'll be no more interested in the VR, there will be no device left on some shelf or eBay auction.

I start searching the web for the cardboard, especially for a Google owned page, and found the Cardboard page itself. Which even has an favicon of its own. Great: Google is providing all the info to do it yourself.

So there is the list of materials, which includes parts for another VR kit ;), for which shipping will take a pretty big amount of time to get so I scraped the list altogether and started searching shops locally.

Materials.