Six Boards Done, a Real Frame, and a Display Vendor Discovery

Big stretch since the last log: the program crossed from designing into spending mode, the frame became real CAD, and we found a vendor that might cut the biggest cost line in half.

What got done

All six PCBs are fab-pack complete. Three bench boards (core, front, aux) and three in-frame prototype boards (p-core, p-front, p-aux), each with schematics, routed layout, gerbers, LCSC BOM, and pick and place files ready for JLCPCB. The hardest, p-core, carries a bare RK3566 with hand-routed LPDDR4 on 6-layer HDI.
A full cost model with live pricing. One complete set of everything lands between $1,143 and $1,972, and the display engine alone is 44 to 51 percent of that.
A 70-check verification pass: 50 clean, 15 documented exceptions, 5 real problems caught and fixed same day. Plus a 16-page Program Review PDF built from a script.
Frame CAD v1, written as parametric code (build123d): seven printable pieces, split-half temples with a screwless post-in-socket board capture, my ear hook as one tangent chain, print-ready STL and STEP exports.

What we found

Verification is not paperwork, it keeps catching real things:

The chirality catch. Seating the real p-core model in the real temple cavity showed the layout mirrored the wrong way, breaching the inner wall. The old box-based fit check could never see this. Caught before fab, so the fix is free.
The 57.9 mm front. CAD proved the drawn 42 mm front cannot hold the old front board channel with legal walls. That forced a better architecture: camera flex straight to the main temple board (like shipped products), front board replaced by one thin sensor strip. Slimmer front, fewer connectors.
Hongshi. A Chinese MicroLED maker building mono green microdisplays: 0.08 and 0.12 inch, 640x480, up to 8 million nits, SPI/QSPI native so zero changes to my boards, plus a matched engine + waveguide module that could collapse my two riskiest cost lines into one part. One of only two mass-production mono-green makers (the other is JBD). RFQ sent in English and Chinese.
Samsung entered the category the same week: camera plus Gemini, no display, phone-tethered. Exactly the gap Luxera plays in: standalone Linux, an actual HUD, Arabic first.
My prescription became a spec. I traced my real lenses (52□18-140, R.E. -2.00, L.E. -1.00, IPD 64.0) so the next frame is built around actual lens outlines. Bonus: the IPD is the display alignment target, since a monocular eyebox must center on the pupil, about 3 mm nasal of the lens center.

What is next

The big rebuild: p-sense strip, p-core respin (mirror fix plus new connectors), and the frame regenerated around my real lens shapes with an anatomical nose bridge and hinge knuckles fused so every part prints as one watertight solid.
MSLA print the right temple and wear-test the hook. Live JLCPCB quotes (quote only). Hongshi quote lands, then the engine decision vs JBD. Then the manager showcase.

The workflow, honestly

Claude Code is the engineering copilot: it writes the KiCad files and the CAD as code and runs for hours. I direct, review, catch the design smells, and make the calls. Nothing counts on vibes: every board answers to real ERC and DRC, every frame part to watertight, wall thickness, and collision checks. Longest single run: 2 days 15 hours.

Attached images

assembly-iso.png: frame CAD v1, full assembly
assembly-split-open.png: temples split open with the real boards seated inside
p-core-bottom.png: the prototype brain, bare RK3566 HDI board
p-front-iso.png: the front board that the new architecture retires

More soon: a printed temple, real quotes, and hopefully a display engine with a price tag.