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Glasses to detect smart-glasses that have cameras

Details

External ID
46075882
Source
HN
Company
—
Product
Glasses to detect smart-glasses that have cameras
Website domain
github.com
Launched
Nov. 28, 2025
Cohort
—
Upvotes
509
Upvotes percentile
0.9868995633187773
Tags
—
Fetched at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Updated at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.

Description

Hi! Recently smart-glasses with cameras like the Meta Ray-bans seem to be getting more popular. As does some people's desire to remove/cover up the recording indicator LED. I wanted to see if there's a way to detect when people are recording with these types of glasses, so a little bit ago I started working this project. I've hit a little bit of a wall though so I'm very much open to ideas!I've written a bunch more on the link (+photos are there), but essentially this uses 2 fingerprinting approaches: - retro-reflectivity of the camera sensor by looking at IR reflections. mixed results here. - wireless traffic (primarily BLE, also looking into BTC and wifi)For the latter, I'm currently just using an ESP32, and I can consistently detect when the Meta Raybans are 1) pairing, 2) first powered on, 3) (less consistently) when they're taken out of the charging case. When they do detect something, it plays a little jingle next to your ear.Ideally I want to be able to detect them when they're in use, and not just at boot. I've come across the nRF52840, which seems like it can follow directed BLE traffic beyond the initial broadcast, but from my understanding it would still need to catch the first CONNECT_REQ event regardless. On the bluetooth classic side of things, all the hardware looks really expensive! Any ideas are appreciated. Thanks!

Enrichment

Theme
hardware hacking and device utilities
Vertical
Security
Function
Hardware & robotics
Audience
B2C
AI stance
Not AI
Project type
Commercial product
Normalized one-liner
camera detection for smart glasses
Manually corrected
False

Could you build this?

No Detecting smart glasses requires custom hardware engineering, optical sensors (like infrared or lens retro-reflection sensors), and physical device prototyping that cannot be vibe-coded.

What it would actually take: The project requires hardware prototyping using microcontrollers (e.g., ESP32 or specialized embedded boards), optical sensors (such as active IR emitters with tuned photoreceivers to detect retro-reflective optical coatings on camera lenses), and compact wearable form-factor design. Signal processing firmware must filter ambient reflections and detect lens-glint signatures in real time. This requires electrical engineering, optics domain knowledge, and physical assembly.

Discussion

20 comments analyzed.

Concerns raised: Recorded video will be shared online and exploited by bad actors, Creates permanent surveillance database enabling tracking and pattern analysis, Enables voyeurism and invasion of privacy despite legal recording restrictions, Difficult to distinguish legitimate recording from surveillance with malicious intent, Social harm from ubiquitous recording in public spaces

Feature requests: Rolling buffer that only saves to storage when deliberately triggered, LED notification only when non-volatile recording starts, Audio-only recording to comply with state notification laws, Detection technology to identify hidden cameras in glasses

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one — 74 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #1 of 75 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 11 days after the earliest competitor.

Other launches for this product

Same idea, different domain

Nobody's really built a hardware & robotics tool for Horizontal yet.