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GlassesResearch Founding Charter

Identity

GlassesResearch is a digital research institution dedicated to the preservation, understanding, and advancement of the global smart-glasses ecosystem.

It is not a manufacturer, marketing site, product-review outlet, or piracy archive. It is a public research, engineering, preservation, and documentation project.

Mission

GlassesResearch exists to:

  • discover useful knowledge;
  • verify claims;
  • preserve endangered information;
  • organize fragmented evidence;
  • attribute original sources and discoveries;
  • teach repeatable methods;
  • make prior discoveries easier to find and build upon.

Every problem solved once should become easier for the next researcher to understand, reproduce, and extend.

Long-term goal

Become the world's most comprehensive, trustworthy, and durable public reference library for smart glasses.

The project is not merely a website or GitHub repository. It is intended to function as a digital research institution whose subject is the smart-glasses ecosystem.

Institutional test

Every future contribution should be evaluated with this question:

Would a serious research library, engineering archive, or technical institution preserve this?

If the answer is yes, the material belongs here when it can be lawfully documented and responsibly attributed.

Research principles

Every significant claim should answer:

  1. Where did it come from?
  2. Who originally discovered, published, or observed it?
  3. Has it been independently verified?
  4. When was it last checked?
  5. What evidence supports it?

Knowledge without provenance is only a claim.

Evidence states

Significant claims should use the repository evidence standard and distinguish at least these states:

  • Verified — directly reproduced, independently confirmed, or supported by authoritative primary evidence.
  • Community Confirmed — consistently reported by multiple credible community sources but not yet reproduced by maintainers.
  • Observed — directly seen or measured in a documented test, without necessarily establishing a general rule.
  • Hypothesis — a plausible interpretation or research direction requiring further evidence.
  • Disproven — tested or sourced evidence shows the claim is incorrect.

Corrections are part of the archive. Disproven claims should not simply disappear when their history is useful.

Preservation priorities

At-risk information moves toward the front of the research queue. Priority materials include:

  • firmware and update packages;
  • companion applications and lawful metadata about their distribution;
  • SDKs, APIs, developer kits, and example code;
  • BLE services, characteristics, packet captures, and protocol notes;
  • manuals, service documents, regulatory filings, patents, and historical specifications;
  • source repositories, community tools, and reverse-engineering notes;
  • teardown photographs, repair procedures, CAD resources, lens templates, and optical measurements;
  • forum discoveries, conference talks, research papers, and technical presentations;
  • product pages and support resources for discontinued devices.

The project should preserve original files only when lawful and appropriate. Otherwise it should preserve metadata, cryptographic hashes, citations, retrieval instructions, provenance, and archive references.

Institutional collections

GlassesResearch should maintain interconnected collections for:

  • the global device database;
  • manufacturer and brand histories;
  • firmware, SDK, API, and application research;
  • BLE and protocol knowledge;
  • hardware, optics, displays, audio, sensors, and repair information;
  • AI capabilities and integrations;
  • research papers, patents, and standards;
  • industry history and product timelines;
  • communities, developers, and preservation targets;
  • buying guidance and product-comparison research;
  • glossary entities and a cross-referenced knowledge graph.

Collections must contain useful information when introduced. Empty scaffolding is not progress.

Model dossiers

Every model page should evolve into a research dossier that can include:

  • stable model identity and aliases;
  • manufacturer, ODM, rebrand, and product-family relationships;
  • release, availability, and discontinuation history;
  • verified specifications and uncertainty notes;
  • official documentation and regulatory filings;
  • firmware, SDK, APIs, and companion applications;
  • BLE and other communications behavior;
  • teardown, repair, lens, prescription, CAD, and accessory information;
  • community projects, reverse engineering, and known modifications;
  • known issues, compatibility, AI integrations, and preservation status;
  • sources, evidence labels, verification dates, and correction history.

Each dossier should aim to become the most complete public research starting point available for that model.

Relationships and discovery

Knowledge must not remain isolated. Manufacturers connect to models; models connect to firmware, applications, SDKs, communities, components, standards, related models, and research findings.

No orphan knowledge.

Every recurring entity should have a canonical home and every relevant page should link back to it.

Merge law

Every merge should satisfy this question:

Does this make GlassesResearch more valuable as a research institution?

The project measures success by verified and preserved knowledge, not by page count.

Highest measure of success

The project succeeds when researchers, developers, journalists, repair technicians, educators, students, hobbyists, manufacturers, and future historians treat GlassesResearch as a primary reference.

Its highest standard is:

If every smart-glasses manufacturer disappeared tomorrow, GlassesResearch would preserve enough lawful public information and original community research for future engineers to continue understanding, studying, repairing, and extending the ecosystem.