Oorion now has Meta Ray-bans support

I was listening to yesterday's Double Tap about the oorion app and how it now has Meta Ray-bans support, and so I gave it a try. This is with the gen 1 Meta Ray-bans and the app store version of oorion, so not a testflight or anything like that.

I haven't used oorion much since installing it, so when I started the app I had to grant permission to a few things. It then told me that Meta glasses support was available and gave me an option to connect. Once I did this, it opened up Safari and I think I was in Meta-land. It asked me to confirm my age and gave me a year dropdown to select from. As far as I can tell, this was not accessible with VoiceOver. My wife had a look and she said nothing was happening when I was trying to select it, so I turned off VOiceOver and she did it. Once I got past this - I think I was in the Meta AI web app, but there was an Open button which I selected which then told me my glasses were connected. I switched back to oorion, told it to connect to the glasses, then I think I had to confirm with Meta again. Anyway, I got in. However, the first time I tried to use the app it couldn't connect to the glasses. I took them off, folded the arms, unfolded and put them on, then I was in business.

I guess I should say that the app seems to beaimed at helping you find stuff - so you ask it find an object and it will help guide you there. It can also do other things like read text from signs and so on. I think I've only scratched the surface. The Meta glasses support allows you to use much of it hands-free but the app kept telling me that it was using the iPhone's microphone. However, you can kick off a voice command, put the phone back in your pocket then start using it. It was using Daniel so I will need to see if I can get that changed!

My first impression is that this has incredible potential. . Like all AI it's a little flawed at times but I think it's all about figuring out what you can and can't use it for.
Shaun from Double Tap said he was using it to find benches, dog poo bins, and even help him find where cars were on pavements. (I should say he didn't recommend relying on it to help you find cars - it's definitely something to be used in conjunction with skills and always treat what it says with a pinch of salt.

I firstly said "oorion, find my labrador" but she was pretty much sat there in front of me, so it didn't have much trouble. I asked it to find a bottle of bleach. I had to move my head around and then it saw it. But it seemed to get a bit confused with left vs right. So it said it had found it, described it but said it was just on my right instead of left. It vaguely got me there, however.

I asked it to find a cat and it started beeping and moving towards somewhere, but there was no cat. I was looking at the cat tree and it said it could see it, but no cat. It said it could see my hand moving into a hole in the tree, but no cat. I crouched down and it then found and described it. So maybe it was just out of view before, but it was a bit weird how it guided me to somewhere the cat often sits but was absent.

I asked it to find some American mustard. It said it could only find general things like mustard unless I wanted to look for some text, so I said yes the bottle has American mustard written on it. I went to the shelves where I knew it was. It told me it was on the middle shelf. I put out my hands but couldn't find a bottle there. It said it's just next to my right hand, but it wasn't. I then tried the top shelf and again it said it's just by your right hand, which was correct in this case.

I asked it to read out any text it could see. At this point it says it can read signs, headings and so on but your iPhone camera is better for small text and articles - I guess the glasses camera might not be suited to that. Anyway it was reading out little bits of text like magazine titles, and apparently we have a decorative plate which has some text on it which it read.

Sometimes it used beeps to help guide me somewhere, but mostly it was just talking and telling me - or saying it can't see the thing and getting me to move a bit.

Anyway, that's just after a little play. It feels like it could be quite useful - it might struggle to find the exact position of something but it will likely get you close. I can see this being particularly useful when my border terrier sneaks in from the garden but I'm not sure and have to go round the house trying to find out where she's got to.

It is pretty mind-blowing that this sort of thing exists. It's not perfect but this is the first app out of the door with this tech and it's actually very decent. It did eventually find everything I asked for even if the last tiny distance was a bit of a struggle. It's also really weird when it says it can see your hand moving forwards and so on.

And this is only the start of apps using the Meta AI features.

I would say I was using it for, I don't know, 10-15 minutes maybe, and it drained the battery to about 73% from fully charged. Shaun was saying that maybe 30mins is about all you will get on the gen 1 glasses which sounds about right.

Oh and also - the app is free, but iPhone only - no Android version.

Anyone else given this a try? How are you finding it?