I bought this piece off eBay for $160. It was listed as Glass EE2 however I’m quickly discovering this is not an EE2 (has a micro USB port, possibly Explorer edition or earlier?).

I don’t know much about Glass other than I tried one in 2015, and right then and there I thought beaming a 16:9 display into one’s retina is the coolest and most useful invention I’d ever experienced.

My plan with Glass is to strap an external pack to my waist and just use it as a display for 360p content. Yes, that’s really it. I think it would be really trivial to normalize a content library to h264@360p and feed it to the Glass via external mass storage plus a power controller, and just watch TV all day while I’m at work.

Anyway, I think the display quality and brightness is sufficient for my use case, and the battery life is irrelevant. Even though I received the wrong product, I still think I’m getting my money’s worth, if only I could unlock this thing.

I can get it to boot into the fastboot/recovery menu or whatever so I’m just wondering if there is a firmware someone can link me to that will ‘blow this thing wide open’. I don’t know if I need root per se, but anything to get me past the “init” menu as it’s asking me to sign in via google and obviously they’ve shut this feature down.

I am totally happy to get into a discussion about using Glass as a media consumption device. I’m well versed in Android and Linux and the concept of rendering pipelines, and I’m aware of the hardware limitations of Glass. I’m looking forward to leading a push to reclaim old and dusty units as media playback machines, if only I could get this old one working.

If someone could point me in the right direction, help me identify the model I have in my hands, and just get the thing to an Android home screen that’d be great. Thanks, Cal

I picked up two Google Glass XE-C units at $60 each. Many of you may already know this, but using fastboot, I could install Android 5.1 (AOSP), which is full Android (no Google though).

And yes, it’s an OS that’s over 10 years old, but the big advantage is that you’re no longer limited to Glass-only apps. You can install and run regular APKs just like on any other Android device.

Wi-Fi works, camera works, speaker works, and the entire temple arm functions as a touchpad for input. For YouTube, I used NewPipe you can either watch videos online or download them and play offline from the gallery.

Battery life actually feels better, and the device runs cooler compared to stock firmware. I can say this confidently because I keep another Glass unit on the original firmware for comparison.

The biggest downside is input. Bluetooth mouse is not supported, so anything that requires complex input is inconvenient. Initial setup in particular can be painful. That said, if you connect Glass to a PC via USB and use Vysor, you can remotely control it from your computer.

I also own two Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses. If I compare the two, a $60 Google Glass can actually do more than a $1000 MRBD. Of course, MRBD is far superior in display quality and neural-band control. Still, it's $60.

If you didn’t know this was possible, here are some useful resources for installing AOSP on Google Glass:

Installation guide (original download links are broken):
https://xdaforums.com/t/rom-aosp-5-1-1-aosp-for-google-glass.3356234

Alternative firmware link (AOSP 5.1.1):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G-8EwqFkGzHqQVRbhzU7XGV3dXz9SrCW/view

Related Reddit post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/googleglass/comments/g9h7hd/convert_your_google_glass_to_a_fully_functional/

Hope this helps someone who still has a Glass sitting in a drawer.