PMSG™: Build Your Own Modular Smart Glasses with Seeed Studio XIAO
Commercial smart glasses tend to share three traits: they’re expensive, they’re closed, and they’re full of cameras. None of that leaves much room for makers — there’s no board to solder, no schematic to read, and no way to swap a component for something that suits your project better.
Amsterdam-based maker and designer Paul Stefaan Mooij wanted the opposite. PMSG™ (Prototype Modular Smart Glasses) is an open-design face-computing platform built around Seeed Studio XIAO boards — a pair of smart glasses you assemble, flash, hack, and keep modifying. The frames come from Without®, made from recycled chip bags; the electronics come from the XIAO and Grove ecosystem; and the entire design is open.
At the heart of the project is a custom PCBA shaped to replace the arm of a standard pair of glasses. It’s designed around normal eyewear hinges, mounts with the original screws, and leaves room along the temple for sensors, connectors, and a battery. For the Without® frames the hinge is soldered on; you can fit your own hinge instead, or choose the ready-to-use kit with the hinge already in place — no soldering required.
The hinge design is open by design and deliberately published in multiple variants, so no patent or IP claim stands in the way — the same approach taken with the open Leiden waveguide. The whole platform stays free for the community to use, modify, and improve.
Hardware Overview
PMSG™ keeps the electronics modular while delivering a complete wearable experience.
- Seeed Studio XIAO board — fully swappable between ESP32-C6, ESP32-S3, nRF52840 Sense, RP2040, and others compatible XIAO boards
- Custom PMSG PCBA with open-source hinge options
- Grove 3.3 V connectors for sensor or module
- 4× WS2812C RGB LEDs on board
- Vibration motor for haptic feedback
- Battery and USB-C charging/programming
- Sensors — temperature/humidity, VOC/NOx, light and UV, IMU
The standard version ships without a camera, by design. A later release (PMSG 6.1 Pro) will let users optionally add a camera module through the XIAO ecosystem and a B2B connector, alongside LoRa mesh networking and a new RF standard.
Privacy by Design
Cameras and Microphones on smart glasses / AI wearables and robotics create a real problem — not for the wearer, but for everyone around them. PMSG™ takes a different route: the base model simply doesn’t have one.
For the versions that eventually do, the project proposes a practical safeguard rather than a promise. The idea came from an unlikely place. Mooij was rewatching the classic Thunderbirds with his kid and noticed that Thunderbird 1 has a sensor that detects when someone is photographing it and raises an alert. The question that stuck with him: recording is useful, but how do you make it transparent?
Automatic Camera Detector from Classic Thunderbirds movies
Photo from: https://thunderbirds.fandom.com/wiki/Automatic_Camera_Detector
The proposal is disarmingly simple. Adding 📵 to the name of an everyday BLE beacon even a mobile phone — is enough to signal “don’t record here” to nearby devices. If operating systems adopted a simple rule to respect that flag, any space could mark itself as no-recording, and any camera-equipped device could make itself detectable and transparent to people nearby. The team has tested the approach and hopes the wider industry, and the Bluetooth SIG, will explore it further. And we have teamed up with known apps like Faceoff and Nearlens.
How PMSG™ Works
Building a pair is a five-step process:
- Start with the PMSG PCBA.
- Mount any supported XIAO board.
- Attach it to your frames See https://without.live/eyewear/
- Plug in Grove sensors or, later, a camera module if you want one / Lora module / NPU etc.
- Flash the firmware via Arduino IDE or PlatformIO.
The firmware supports BLE notifications, RGB animations, haptic feedback, environmental sensing, and mesh networking. Everything stays open, so makers can modify and extend the system rather than work around it.
To make setup easier, the project also provides an AI-assisted setup guide — a purpose-built PMSG Setup Guide that walks you through selecting your XIAO board, wiring your I²C sensors, and getting BLE, LEDs, and vibration running. All firmware, PCB designs, and documentation live on GitHub.
Why XIAO?
The XIAO family offered the balance PMSG needed: a footprint small enough to sit along a glasses temple without looking absurd, built-in wireless, and native Grove compatibility for adding sensors without redesigning anything.
The decisive feature, though, was the shared compact form factor and broadly compatible pin layout. This allows users to swap between supported XIAO boards for different needs — Wi-Fi, BLE, LoRa, or lower-power applications — while keeping the same core PCBA and frame. One compact platform, multiple processor options. For an open platform meant to be modified rather than merely used, that’s the difference between a fixed product and a genuine platform.
An Open Ecosystem, and What's Next
PMSG™ is built in close partnership with Without® for sustainable frames, and with Seeed Studio for open-source hardware and a manufacturing path inside the XIAO and Grove ecosystem.
After more than two years of prototyping and real-world testing, the project has a clear picture of what practical smart glasses actually need: modularity, comfort, discreet feedback, long battery life, and an open design anyone can improve.
If PMSG™ units start selling, an add-on kit will follow for people who already own an earlier version, so existing users can upgrade without starting over. Future versions are planned to expand the platform with additional connectivity options, display capabilities, and optional camera support while maintaining compatibility with the existing modular approach.
The team is explicitly hoping for continuous community feedback — what gets built next depends partly on what people ask for.
Get Started
All hardware designs, firmware, and documentation are open and available:
- 🔧 GitHub repository — PCB designs, firmware, and docs
- 🌐 pmsg.online — project site and kits
- 🤖 Setup guide — AI-assisted walkthrough
Whether you want discreet notifications, environmental sensing, mesh networking, or just a platform to experiment with the next generation of wearable tech, PMSG™ gives you an open, modular, and privacy-aware place to start — with the Seeed Studio XIAO ecosystem at its core.
Credits
Paul Stefaan Mooij credits the people and companies who made PMSG™ possible: Without® team for the recycled frames and Seeed Studio team for the XIAO ecosystem and open-hardware support, along with TeQmeQ™, NVIDIA Inception ( 💚 Jensen ), Brilliant Wear, The Things Industries, Norrsken, Meshtastic, Hackster and The RFID Company. Special mention goes to Merijn Tinga, who tested the sport model and field-tested the glasses through salt, sweat, and long SUP and windsurf tours. And more people supporting us.
End Note
Hey community, we’re curating a monthly newsletter centering around the beloved Seeed Studio XIAO. If you want to stay up-to-date with:
🤖️ Cool Projects from the Community to get inspiration and tutorials
📰 Product Updates: firmware update, new product spoiler
📖 Wiki Updates: new wikis + wiki contribution
📣 News: events, contests, and other community stuff
Please click the image below👇 to subscribe now!
About Author
