3-D printed Google Glass ain’t got no soul

May 15, 2013, 3:04pm EDT

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Sunny Gao poses with his 3-D printed Google Glassframes. Quora / Sunny Gao

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Michael del Castillo

Upstart Business Journal Technology & Innovation Editor

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Ever since Chinese entrepreneur Sunny Gao released the files for his own 3-D printed “Google Glass,” I haven’t been able to shake the thought: What is Google Glass? And how easily could I copy it?
As Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) says in its own spectacles' description on its webpage: “It’s surprisingly simple.”
The glasses are a pair of frames, which Gao has copied and put online for all the world to download, even if the nose piece isn’t removable like the real glasses.
The glasses are also Android-based core kernal code, which on April 27 Google released to the public, basically asking coders to get hacking, building software to run on the spectacles.
And as ZDnet wrote about the Google Glass Mirror API, all this “gives software developers and hackers alike everything they need to start writing programs for Glass, and for that matter, even start working on Google Glass clones.”
But Google Glass is also a 5-megapixel camera that can shoot video in 720p; Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled; a sound system via a bone-conduction transducer; a display; a listen button; an on/off button, capture button, touch-sensitive area, a Micro-USB port for charging, and a status LED and rear-facing sensor array.